Orders were therefore issued on this plan to the corporals in the city and to conspirators in other places, particularly to Gianluca Fieschi, Giulio Cybo and the marquis of Valdimagra. A number of armed men were introduced into the city under cover of the festivities of that day on which the burghers are wont to flock into the city from every direction. Much artifice was employed in bringing in the troops. They entered in small bodies and by different gates, some even by subterranean passages which conducted to the palace of the count. Some wore the habit of mountaineers, others had various disguises. A number were loaded with chains under pretence that they were criminals condemned to serve on the galleys of the count. Some were lodged in the houses of the conspirators, but the greater part in the palace in Vialata and neighbouring houses. Still, the main body of the soldiers was not brought within the walls, but distributed over mount Fasce and contiguous heights, ready to enter the gates so soon as a smoke should rise from the hill of Carignano. Such was the good order and discretion of the conspirators that the Senate had not the faintest suspicion. Early in the day count Fieschi, mounted upon a spirited jennet, rode through the populous streets. He had never appeared so jovial and composed, his strong will governing his impetuous nature. We find in some letters of Sacco,[43] of which we shall speak in another place, that a personage whose name is concealed held a conference that day with the count in the palace of Vialata. This person discoursed of the popular dislike for the Doria government, and concluded by saying that the count had only to wish it to become master of Genoa. It is easy to see, that the count brusquely repulsed the insinuation. Sacco believed that this man had been sent by Gianettino to pry into the plans and purposes of Fieschi; but it is now certain that the Dorias were living in entire ignorance of the tempest gathering over their heads. The unknown personage must have been one of the spies whom Figuerroa kept on the trail of all the opponents of the Spanish power in Italy.