Dismissal of the ministry, of the general, and of
such of the officers of the army as have strongly
expressed themselves hostile to the present
movement.
      An alliance offensive and defensive with Piedmont.
      Active co-operation in the war with all the
resources of the nation; and the supreme command of
the army to be given to General Ulloa.
      The regulation of the constitutional liberties of the
country to be settled according to that of Italy
generally.

On this second visit the Grand-Duke himself
received Lajatico; who, with all respect and
delicacy, laid these demands before him. The
Marchese thought that the ministers would at
least have let the Grand-Duke know what was
the point of difficulty in granting them. But
it seems that they were incapable of doing
anything but sitting in permanence, until turned out
of their seats. Lajatico, therefore, found the Duke
quite taken by surprise at the demand for his
abdication. He required time to consider his
reply to so important a proposal, and returned
to consult with his ministers and the corps
diplomatique on the subject. "Three-quarters
of an hour afterwards," says the historian of
these four hours, "it was known that the Duke
refused, and had determined on leaving Florence.
It was then just one o'clock; and so ended the
four hours, in which all might have been saved,
and in which all was lost."

It is said that all the foreign ministers,
including even the Austrian, concurred in
endeavouring to persuade the Grand-Duke to
accept the proposed abdication; but in vain.
The dismay of the falling ministers, waked
up at last from their permanence, was excessive.

"But this populace, eccellenza," one of them
is reported to have said to a foreign minister,
anxious about the fate of the sovereign rather
than that of his servants— but this populace
demands our dismissal."

"Yes! but they have made no demand for
heads," was the reply.

Meanwhile, the people were patiently waiting
for the decision of the sovereign. A few
persons, who had in an extemporary manner
assumed the guidance of the shouting and banner-
bearing, but otherwise tranquil, populace,
sedulously kept them parading parts of the city at a
distance from the palace, lest their noise, or
condensation in masses in front of the royal residence,
should be mistaken for, or construed into, an
appearance of menace. Some of the military
corps had sent out their bands, and these
playing the '48 hymn, and other such popular
melodies, were marching up one street and
down another with all the proletariate of the
town at their heels. All this time not a
shop, not a banker, not a money-changer with
the heaps of gold coin in his windows and on
his counters, thought it worth while to put up
a shutter. Many ladies walked and drove through
the streets to see the humours of revolution.
One lady sported a gay tricolor parasol, which
assuredly must have been lying in some snug
retreat ever since '48, biding its time. A
few hundred people, chiefly of the professional,
literary, and artistic classes, and several
carriages, were assembled on the esplanade in front
of the Pitti, anxiously awaiting the result of the
negotiations known to be going on inside. It
was about mid-day, when it was circulated among
these groups that nothing could be made known
till four o'clock; and the crowd thereupon
dispersed as quietly and quickly as a church
congregation goes home after the blessing.

Much before the hour named, however, it was
definitively announced that the Grand-Duke
declined to accede to the conditions, and would
leave Florence with all his family that night. The
news was very soon known throughout the city,
and was received by the citizens with the most
perfect quietude and indifference. They knew
that their cause was won.

                 VII.    BELVIDERE.

THE Grand-Duke's admirers assert that he
preferred departure from his capital to
endangering the lives of his subjects. Yet the bloody
repression of an insurrectionary movement at
Leghorn two years ago, when much more violence
was used and many more lives were sacrificed,
than was needful for the end in view,
lessened in some degree the confidence of the
Tuscans in the merciful disposition of their prince.
The troops who committed needless cruelties
on that occasion were under Austrian discipline
and drill, and commanded by an Austrian
general, and the officers were rewarded for the
butchery of their fellow-countrymen by
Austrian decorations and approval. The Tuscans
were still inclined to hope, therefore, that the
Leghorn cruelties were not acceptable to the
Grand-Duke. And it may perhaps be still
possible by charitable supposition to avoid
conclusions destructive of his character for humanity
from the anecdote which it is now necessary to
relate; but, even had the Duke been animated
by vindictive feelings of the most Austro-
Borbonic ferocity, it is clear that he had little
chance of gratifying them, for no hands could be
found to point a cannon or pull a trigger.

Between the Fortessa di Belvidere, or upper
fortress, and the Pitti Palace, there are only the
Grand-Ducal gardens, called the Boboli. When
these gardens, therefore, are shut to the public
—which is the case except on Sundays and
Thursdays—any of the inmates of the palace may
pass in privacy from the Pitti to the fortress.

Now, between nine and ten o'clock of the
day when the Duke was taking counsel of the
foreign minister—asking counsel which he was
determined not to take—the Grand-Duchess
and her second son thus passed from the Pitti
to the Belvidere. This second son of the Duke
was the colonel of the corps of artillery, and many
of the officers of that body had their quarters in
the fortress. Those who are anxious to explain
away or mitigate the significance of this excursion,
are eager to assert that the younger children
also accompanied their mother, and that
the object of this visit to the fortress was merely
safety. It may have been that the younger
children did go with their mother, but it is very