Mnemosyne says nothing; since she knows nothing on the subject, beyond the facts here set down. But she may be permitted to observe, on the one hand, that fifteenth-century dissipation was particularly destructive of human life, and that the Cardinal had evidently for some time past been leading a life to kill any man;—and on the other hand, that as a specimen of the good old times, the very general contemporary suspicion that St. Mark's lion _had_ stretched out on this occasion a long and stealthy paw, comes much to the same thing as evidence of character, as if the deed itself were chronicled.[63] [Sidenote: CARDINAL PETER'S EPITAPH.] The Cardinal died on the 5th of January, 1474, to the great grief of Pope Sixtus, says Corio,[64] and to the infinite delight of the whole college of Cardinals. The indignation caused by the accumulation of so many scandalous vices, and so many rich benefices on one pair of purple shoulders, manifested itself after the wonted fashion of the eternal city in a volley of epigrams and satirical epitaphs more savage than witty. One somewhat to the following effect,[65] was found placarded on the monument raised over his remains by the afflicted Pope: "Once more let worth, and long lost virtue reign, And vice be banish'd from its throne in Rome! Rogues, wretches, profligates, and all their train No more shall find on Latian soil their home; For he, the plague-spot of our church and state, Peter, is gone to meet in hell his fate." Orthodox Burriel, however, assures us, that all the malicious outpourings of envious hate were silenced and put to shame by the following victorious couplet in the genuine decorous tombstone style. "Sage in his prime!—'tis that has caused our tears; Death from his virtues deemed him full of years." Among the select minority, who truly mourned the premature death of this youthful sage, the Duke of Milan and his daughter may be safely reckoned. The marriage arranged wholly by him might very possibly run risk of being broken off. And in any case the Duke's ulterior and more ambitious schemes were nipped in the bud. Catherine was, however, as her biographer assures us, "infinitely rejoiced and comforted" by an early courier from Rome, bearing assurances, that her unseen bridegroom and his august kinsman had no intention of allowing the Cardinal's death to make any difference in the arrangements for the marriage. Let the reader's mind dwell a moment on the "infinite rejoicing and comfort" of this eleven-year-old princess, at the news that she was not after all to lose her marriage with an unseen stranger;—remembering the while that, making allowance for longitude and latitude, we Northerns may for "eleven" read thirteen or fourteen.