cries and lamentations, strange howlings, gnashing of teeth, clanking of chains, sighs and groans, were heard; and innumerable flames of fire burst forth from holes made in the earth, so that the grass was burned by them. In truth, to anybody not in the secret, the scene must have been," thinks Malespini, "shocking and terrible in no small degree." [Sidenote: A FLORENCE NIGHT.] "And, indeed, when the party heard all this horrible tumult, many, I promise you, were frightened enough, and thought no more of the stinking smoke in their alarm. Then the necromancer thought it time to bring about his catastrophe. Stamping with his foot therefore, he gave the sign agreed on for the letting go the chains that supported over the pit beneath the platform with the soil and grass on which they were all sitting. The brasiers and the knife were dexterously removed outside the circle by the necromancer. But the whole of the party were precipitated pell–mell one over the other into the pit; much of the earth and sods which had been ranged on the platform falling on the top of them. If the previous circumstances had frightened them, let anybody judge," says our chronicler, "how much more they were terrified now, finding themselves all precipitated, with the Grand Duke in the midst, into the bowels of the earth. In short there was not one of them, as they afterwards confessed, who did not firmly believe that they had looked their last on the light of the sun." "No sooner had they fallen thus into the pit, than the devils were upon them, making noises more horrible than before, and looking fearfully hideous in the lurid light of the flames that continually blazed forth. So that in truth the poor fellows were beside themselves with terror, and hardly knew if they were alive or dead."