From the imperfect means Franz had of judging, he could only come to one conclusion⁠—that the person whom he was thus watching certainly belonged to no inferior station of life.

Some few minutes had elapsed, and the stranger began to show manifest signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard outside the aperture in the roof, and almost immediately a dark shadow seemed to obstruct the flood of light that had entered it, and the figure of a man was clearly seen gazing with eager scrutiny on the immense space beneath him; then, as his eye caught sight of him in the mantle, he grasped a floating mass of thickly matted boughs, and glided down by their help to within three or four feet of the ground, and then leaped lightly on his feet. The man who had performed this daring act with so much indifference wore the Transtevere costume.

“I beg your excellency’s pardon for keeping you waiting,” said the man, in the Roman dialect, “but I don’t think I’m many minutes after my time, ten o’clock has just struck by the clock of Saint John Lateran.”