ful scenes were being enacted in the subterranes of the
holy inquisition, Demetrius was actively engaged in directing those
plans and effecting those arrangements which the scheming disposition of
Nisida of Riverola had suggested. We should observe that in the morning
he had sought and found Antonio, with whom he had so expertly managed
that the villain had fallen completely into the snare spread to entrap
him, and had not only confessed that he held at his disposal the liberty
of the Count of Riverola, but had also agreed to deliver him up to the
Greek. In a word, every thing in this respect took place precisely as
Nisida had foreseen. Accordingly, so soon as it was dark in the evening,
sixty of the Ottoman soldiers quitted by two and threes the mansion
which the Florentine Government had appropriated as a dwelling for the
envoy and his suit. The men whom Demetrius thus intrusted with the
execution of his scheme, and whose energy and fidelity he had previously
secured by means of liberal reward and promise of more, were disguised
in different ways, but were all well armed. To be brief, so well were
the various dispositions taken, and so effectually were they executed,
that those sixty soldiers had concealed themselves in the grove
indicated by their master, without having excited in the minds of the
Florentine people the least suspicion that anything unusual was about to
take place. It was close upon eleven o'clock at night, when Demetrius,
after having obtained a hasty interview with Nisida, whom he acquainted
with the progress of the plot, repaired to the grove wherein his men
were already distributed, and took his station in the midst of the knot
of olives on the right of the huge chestnut tree which overhung the
chasm.

Nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed, and naught was heard save the
waving of the branches and the rustling of the foliage, as the breeze of
night agitated the grove; but at the expiration of that brief period,
the sound of voices was suddenly heard close by the chestnut tree--not
preceded by any footsteps nor other indication of the presence of
men--and thus appearing as if they had all at once and in an instant
emerged from the earth.

Not a moment had elapsed--no, not a moment--ere those individuals whose
voices were thus abruptly heard, were captured and secured by a dozen
Ottoman soldiers, who sprung upon them from the dense thickets around or
dropped amongst them from the branches overhead--an