she embraced him publicly, and actually lived with him as
his wife.

At the time that this impostor appeared, Sigismund declared war
against Russia, and his marshal Tolkiewski succeeded in inflicting a
terrible defeat on Schnisky. Moscow yielded before the victorious
Poles; and in despair Schnisky renounced the crown and retired into a
monastery. But no sooner was the diadem vacant than a host of false
Dimitris appeared to claim it, and the chief power was tossed from one
party to another during a weary interregnum. At last, in 1609,
Sigismund, who had remained at Smolensko while his marshal advanced
upon Moscow, proclaimed his own son Vladislaf to the vacant
sovereignty, and the pretended Dimitri sank into obscurity. Others,
however, arose; and although some of them perished on the scaffold, it
was not until 1616 that Russia was freed from the last of the
disturbing impostors who attempted to personate princes of the race of
Ivan the Terrible.

PADRE OTTOMANO--THE SUPPOSED HEIR OF SULTAN IBRAHIM.

In the year 1640, there lived in Constantinople one Giovanni Jacobo
Cesii, a Persian merchant of high repute throughout the Levant. This
man, who was descended from a noble Roman family, was on most intimate
terms with Jumbel Agha, the Sultan's chief eunuch, who sometimes gave
him strange commissions. Among other instructions which the merchant
received from the chief of the imperial harem, was an order to procure
privately the prettiest girl he could find in the slave marts of
Stamboul, where at this time pretty girls were by no means rare.
Jumbel Agha intended this damsel as an adornment for his own
household, and a personal companion for himself, and particularly
specified that to her beauty she should add modesty and virginity.
Cesii executed his orders to the best of his ability, and procured for
the bloated and lascivious Agha a Russian girl called Sciabas, as fair
as a _houri_, and apparently as timid as a fawn. Unfortunately,
notwithstanding her innocent demeanour, it only too soon became
apparent that her virtue was not unimpeachable, and that ere long she
would add yet another member to the household of her new master.
Jumbel Agha, who was at first wroth with his pretty plaything, after
the heat of his passion had passed, consented to forgive her if she
would divulge the name of the father of her expected offspring; but
the fair one, although frail, was firm, and despising alike threats
and cajoleries, d