he scene which
followed.

The two old men were led up to Ali, who, smiling and rubbing his
hands, stood up before them, and for a long time did not speak, but
only smiled. At last he gently stroked the face of the younger of the
two.

"Merchant of Naples, thou still dost not know, then, where thy
treasures lie hidden?" said he, gently.

"My lord," replied the other, with desperate obsequiousness, "I have
given up everything that was mine. I am indeed a beggar."

"Merchant of Naples! how canst thou say so? Let me refresh thy memory!
Thou didst go to Toulon with a full cargo of Indian goods, and there
sold it all. When we met together on thy return journey thou didst
offer me a thousand ducats, which I also took. But where is the
remainder? A profit of twelve thousand ducats appears entered in thy
trading-books."

"Those books are false, my lord," said the merchant, in a tearful
voice. "I made those totally fictitious entries simply to preserve my
credit."

"Merchant of Naples, thou dost calumniate thyself. Thou dost want to
make me believe that thou art not an honest man. Forgive me if I
enliven thy memory a little."

With that he beckoned to the eunuchs, and they, undressing the
merchant, laid him on the torturing slab and tortured him for two
mortal hours. It would be too horrible to say what they did to him.
Oh, that curious woman amply atoned for her curiosity! She was obliged
to look upon tortures which made her limbs shake and shiver as if she
were in the grip of an ague. She covered her face, but the howls of
the tortured wretch penetrated to her very soul, and her sensitive
nerves suffered almost as much as if she had felt these torments
herself. Gradually, however, a curious sort of torpor seemed to stop
the beating of her heart; her limbs ceased to tremble, she opened her
eyes and, motionless as a statue, watched the hellish scene to the
very end.

Ali was evidently a past-master in this horrible science. He himself
elaborately graduated the whole process, indicating briefly when and
how long the thumb-screws, the Spanish boot, the boiling oil, and the
water funnel were to be used. Last of all came the culminating
torment. They wrapped the merchant round in a raw buffalo-skin and
laid him down before the fiercely blazing fire. As the fire began to
compress the raw hide, and slowly press together the tortured limbs,
the limit of the poor wretch's endurance was reached, and he confessed
that his trea