husband, but 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