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By what means the Italian accomplished his purpose has remained a secret between those on whom the blow fell and those who directed it. It was reported that he laid before the prince the original draughts of a secret and very suspicious correspondence which G—— is said to have carried on with a neighboring court; but opinions differ as to whether the letters were authentic or spurious. Whatever degree of truth there may have been in the accusation it is but too certain that it fearfully accomplished the end in view. In the eyes of the prince G—– appeared the most ungrateful and vilest of traitors, whose treasonable practices were so thoroughly proved as to warrant the severest measures without further investigation. The whole affair was arranged with the most profound secrecy between Martinengo and his master, so that G—— had not the most distant presentiment of the impending storm. He continued wrapped in this fatal security until the dreadful moment in which he was destined, from being the object of universal homage and envy, to become that of the deepest commiseration.

When the decisive day arrived, G—— appeared, according to custom, upon the parade. He had risen in a few years from the rank of ensign to that of colonel; and even this was only a modest name for that of prime minister, which he virtually filled, and which placed him above the foremost of the land. The parade was the place where his pride was greeted with universal homage, and where he enjoyed for one short hour the dignity for which he endured a whole day of toil and privation. Those of the highest rank approached him with reverential deference, and those who were not assured of his favor with fear and trembling. Even the prince, whenever he visited the parade, saw himself neglected by the side of his vizier, inasmuch as it was far more dangerous to incur the displeasure of the latter than profitable to gain the friendship of the former. This very place, where he was wont to be adored as a god, had been selected for the dreadful theatre of his humiliation.

With a careless step he entered the well-known circle of courtiers, who, as unsuspicious as himself of what was to follow, paid their usual homage, awaiting his commands. After a short interval appeared Martinengo, accompanied by two adjutants, no longer the supple, cringing, smiling courtier, but overbearing and insolent, like a lackey suddenly raised to the rank of a gentleman. With insolence and effrontery he strutted up to the prime minister, and, confronting him with his head covered, demanded his sword in the prince’s name. This was handed to him with a look of silent consternation; Martinengo, resting the naked point on the ground, snapped it in two with his foot, and threw the fragments at G—–‘s feet. At this signal the two adjutants seized him; one tore the Order of the Cross from his breast; the other pulled off his epaulettes, the facings of his uniform, and even the badge and plume of feathers from his hat. During the whole of the appalling operation, which was conducted with incredible speed, not a sound nor a respiration was heard from more than five hundred persons who were present; but all, with blanched faces and palpitating hearts, stood in deathlike silence around the victim, who in his strange disarray–a rare spectacle of the melancholy and the ridiculous– underwent a moment of agony which could only be equalled by feelings engendered on the scaffold. Thousands there are who in his situation would have been stretched senseless on the ground by the first shock; but his firm nerves and unflinching spirit sustained him through this bitter trial, and enabled him to drain the cup of bitterness to its dregs.

When this procedure was ended he was conducted through rows of thronging spectators to the extremity of the parade, where a covered carriage was in waiting. He was motioned to ascend, an escort of hussars being ready-mounted to attend to him. Meanwhile the report of this event had spread through the whole city; every window was flung open, every street lined with throngs of curious spectators, who pursued the carriage, shouting his name, amid cries of scorn and malicious exultation, or of commiseration more bitter to bear than either. At length he cleared the town, but here a no less fearful trial awaited him. The carriage turned out of the high road into a narrow, unfrequented path–a path which led to the gibbet, and alongside which, by command of the prince, he was borne at a slow pace. After he had suffered all the torture of anticipated execution the carriage turned off into the public road. Exposed to the sultry summer-heat, without refreshment or human consolation, he passed seven dreadful hours in journeying to the place of destination–a prison fortress. It was nightfall before he arrived; when, bereft of all consciousness, more dead than alive, his giant strength having at length yielded to twelve hours’ fast and consuming thirst, he was dragged from the carriage; and, on regaining his senses, found himself in a horrible subterraneous vault. The first object that presented itself to his gaze was a horrible dungeon-wall, feebly illuminated by a few rays of the moon, which forced their way through narrow crevices to a depth of nineteen fathoms. At his side he found a coarse loaf, a jug of water, and a bundle of straw for his couch. He endured this situation until noon the ensuing day, when an iron wicket in the centre of the tower was opened, and two hands were seen lowering a basket, containing food like that he had found the preceding night. For the first time since the terrible change in his fortunes did pain and suspense extort from him a question or two. Why was he brought hither? What offence had he committed? But he received no answer; the hands disappeared; and the sash was closed. Here, without beholding the face, or hearing the voice of a fellow-creature; without the least clue to his terrible destiny; fearful doubts and misgivings overhanging alike the past and the future; cheered by no rays of the sun, and soothed by no refreshing breeze; remote alike from human aid and human compassion; –here, in this frightful abode of misery, he numbered four hundred and ninety long and mournful days, which he counted by the wretched loaves that, day after day, with dreary monotony, were let down into his dungeon. But a discovery which he one day made early in his confinement filled up the measure of his affliction. He recognized the place. It was the same which he himself, in a fit of unworthy vengeance against a deserving officer, who had the misfortune to displease him, had ordered to be constructed only a few months before. With inventive cruelty he had even suggested the means by which the horrors of captivity might be aggravated; and it was but recently that he had made a journey hither in order personally to inspect the place and hasten its completion. What added the last bitter sting to his punishment was that the same officer for whom he had prepared the dungeon, an aged and meritorious colonel, had just succeeded the late commandant of the fortress, recently deceased, and, from having been the victim of his vengeance, had become the master of his fate. He was thus deprived of the last melancholy solace, the right of compassionating himself, and of accusing destiny, hardly as it might use him, of injustice. To the acuteness of his other suffering was now added a bitter self-contempt, contempt, and the pain which to a sensitive mind is the severest–dependence upon the generosity of a foe to whom he had shown none.