The Pope ordered him to be taken to St. Angelo; and there Girolamo did get him into his hands. The torments to which he was subjected in those secret thick-walled torture chambers, are described as horrible. "At last," writes Infessura,[109] goaded by his feelings into the unwonted eloquence of irony, "the most holy Father in Christ, our Lord and Master, together with his accomplice, the Count Girolamo, according to their innate and wonted clemency, mercy, and justice, which they have ever shown, and still show, towards the faithful sons of holy Mother Church, have given us a crowning proof of their admirable qualities and hearts. For the medical men summoned by themselves to the prison of the Protonotary Colonna, have declared, that the varied and most excruciating tortures to which he has been subjected, have made it impossible that he should live." He then proceeds to give a detailed account, according to the report of the surgeons, of the injuries inflicted on every part of the unfortunate man's body, which, curious as it is in its indications of the scientific ingenuity of the torturers, is too painful for reproduction. But though the Colonna was dying, he did not die fast enough. On the 30th of June, therefore, the anniversary, as Infessura remarks, of the decapitation of St. Paul by Nero, "His Holiness, our Lord and Master, inflicted a similar fate on the Protonotary." The mutilated body was then dressed in vile and grotesque rags in mockery of his late rank and state, and so sent to his mother. "And I, Stefano Infessura, the writer of this history, saw it with these eyes, and buried his body with these hands! For no other citizen of the Colonna faction would meddle in the matter, as I suppose, from fear." [Sidenote: THE PAPAL HORIZON DARKENS.] It is to be observed therefore that our chronicler was evidently a warm partizan of the persecuted family. But his narrative has all the characteristics of truthfulness as to its facts. Whenever any ill-deed of the opposite faction rests only on common report, or suspicion, he records the accusation, but always marks it as only a report. Besides that he is in the main perfectly corroborated by the apparently impartial Notary of Nantiporto. After the death of the Protonotary the Colonnas attempted by submission to make peace with Sixtus, so as to preserve some remnant of the family possessions. But Sixtus, though trembling on the verge of the grave himself, would hear of no peace or reconciliation as long as there remained anything belonging to a Colonna, which might be wrenched from them for the enriching of a Riario.