scholars and poets, the finest flower of the Farnese, a grandson and namesake of whom Paul III was justly proud. The cardinal was the Pope’s darling, and from him Paul felt he could expect support and sympathy. The interview, however, soon became stormy. High words passed. The Pope flew into a rage and snatched the biretta from the cardinal’s head. He had discovered that Alessandro also was carrying on a secret counterplot against him, and the discovery broke the old man’s heart. Such a violent attack of anger at the age of eighty-three brought on an illness from which he had neither the strength nor the wish to recover, and in a week’s time Paul III was dead. Even after his death the Romans loved him--a rare tribute to any pope--and all Rome went to kiss his feet. He had been the first Roman to occupy St. Peter’s chair in over one hundred years, and the Romans felt his virtues and his failings to be their own. Fifteen years before, they had carried him on their shoulders into old St. Peter’s for his coronation, and now they buried him there. His tomb cost twenty-four thousand Roman crowns, and is the masterpiece of Guglielmo della Porta. The two recumbent statues upon it are said to be after a sketch by Michelangelo. The connection of Michelangelo’s name with the tomb is interesting, but of greater interest is the romantic legend which surrounds the statue of the younger woman. This figure, once called Truth and now known to be Justice, is said to be the portrait of Paul III’s sister, and this recalls the fact that the fortunes of the princely family of the Farnese rest upon no more honorable basis than the passion of Alexander VI (Borgia) for this sister, the beautiful Giulia Farnese. No one can study the statue on the tomb without understanding how it was that this magnificent creature seemed to the men of her time the flesh-and-blood presentment of those Pagan goddesses whom they all, secretly or openly, worshipped. The superb body is now concealed by Bernini’s hideous leaden draperies, but the carelessly waving hair and tiny ear have witchery even in the marble, while the face possesses that solemnity of perfect beauty found only in the masterpieces of the Greeks. Never before or since was such a price paid for the Red Hat! Alexander VI made the young brother, Alessandro Farnese, aged twenty-five, a cardinal, and Giulia Farnese went to reign in those Borgia apartments, decorated by all the genius of Pinturicchio, and at once the pride and disgrace of the Vatican. The young cardinal was nicknamed the Petticoat Cardinal; but he seems to have felt no compunction at the transaction. With the Romans, as with the Parisians, ridicule is the most powerful engine of destruction; and the fact that Alessandro Farnese lived this sobriquet down, proves, as nothing else can prove, the hold he had upon the Roman people.