The marriage of Lucretia was soon afterwards celebrated with more than Asiatic pomp, and the Romans contributed to render it as brilliant as possible. The bells pealed from the churches; the artillery thundered from Saint Angelo; there were bull-fights; the most immoral and indecent comedies were performed; and the delighted populace shouted before the Vatican, "Long live Pope Alexander! long live Lucretia, Duchess of Este!" Faustus huzzaed with the best of them, and said to the Devil: "If these acclamations ascend to heaven with the groans of the assassinated, which will the Eternal believe?" The fiend bowed himself to the earth, and was silent. In order to crown the festivities of the marriage, Alexander and his daughter commanded a spectacle which must for ever stand unparalleled in the annals of human infamy. The Pope sat, with his daughter, upon a couch, in a vast illuminated hall. Faustus, the Devil, and others who had been invited to this scene, stood around them. Suddenly the doors opened, and in rushed fifty nude courtesans,--more beautiful than the houris in Mahomet's paradise,--and performed, to the voluptuous sound of flutes and other instruments, a dance which decency forbids us to describe, although it was a Pope who designed the figure. When the dance was ended, his Holiness gave the signal for a combat which we are still less permitted to depict,--he himself holding the prize of victory. They proclaimed Faustus to be the conqueror. Lucretia overwhelmed him with kisses, and crowned him with laurels; while the Pope delivered to him the prize,--a golden goblet, on which Lucretia had caused to be engraven the School of Pleasure. Faustus gave it the very next day to a Venetian monk, in whose possession Aretino saw it a long time afterwards, and illustrated some of its incidents in his sonnets.