The porter could not possibly have picked that lock; indeed, scarcely
any one could have done so without injuring it, and Malipieri had
locked it himself at about seven o'clock that evening. Even if the
porter could have got in by any means, Malipieri doubted whether he
could have reached the inner chamber of the vaults. There was some
climbing to be done, and the man was old and stiff in the joints. The
place was not so easy to find as might have been supposed, either,
after the first breach in the Roman wall was past. Malipieri intended
to improve the passage the next morning, in order to make it more
practicable for Sabina.
He racked his brains for an explanation of the mystery, and when he
reached the door of the palace, after eleven o'clock, he had come to
the conclusion that in spite of appearances there must be some
entrance to the vaults of which he knew nothing, and it was all-
important to find it. He regretted the quixotic impulse which had
restrained him from exploring everything at once. It would have been
far better to go to the end of his discovery, and he wondered why he
had not done go. He would not have insulted himself by supposing that
Sabina could believe him capable of taking the gem from the ring of
the statue, in other words, of stealing, since whoever the rightful
owner might be, nothing in the vault could possibly belong to him, and
he regarded it all as her property, though he doubted whether he could
ever obtain for her a tenth part of the value it represented.
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