The devotion of the Romans to Clement’s successor (the Farnese pontiff, Paul III) was in great part due to their recognition of the fact that his pontificate represented a sustained and gallant attempt to restore to his people their lost prestige--that _figura_ so dear to the Roman heart. With the death of the old patrician the deplorable condition of the city once more asserted itself and men realized more keenly than ever the permanent devastation wrought by the sack. Posterity gains some faint idea of its horrors from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. It is indebted to him for the dramatic description of the death of the Constable de Bourbon, killed by a chance shot from the ramparts when, in the dense fog which enveloped the beleaguered city, he was planting the scaling ladders against the walls. Four days earlier, and during the march on Rome, the other commander of the besieging army, the veteran George Freundsberg, had died of a stroke of apoplexy brought on by the mutinous conduct of his troops; so that, without leaders, forty thousand of the worst soldiery of Europe were turned loose within the city walls--turned loose to recoup themselves for their long arrears of wages out of everything which the taste, learning, and moral sense of civilized man has always held most precious. History records that the Spanish were the most cold-blooded, the Germans the most bestial, and the Italians the most inventive in forms of villainy. The week of unspeakable atrocities, wanton destruction, and wholesale pillage came to an end; but when it did, that marvellous treasure-house of civilization--Rome of the Renaissance--had perished, and the place thereof was to know her no more. It was no wonder that, during the decade which followed, Rome--what was left of her--seemed hardly to breathe. When, during the pontificate of Paul III she began to revive, it was plain to all men that she was not, and could never be, the same. Life came back to her at last, not through æsthetic but through ethical channels.