Terrible scenes were enacted at executions in those days. The story of the execution of Abbé Rivarola in 1668, found guilty of writing libellous satires, throws into strong relief the mad passions into which the Roman populace were constantly betrayed, and the terrible mental tortures inflicted upon the unhappy victims of the law. The abbé was so overcome by the terrors of the situation that in spite of all that could be done to keep up his courage and all the restoratives that were administered to him during the night preceding his execution, he had hardly strength enough left to be taken in a cart to the fatal place where he was to suffer. He was dragged up on the scaffold by the members of the confraternity in attendance on him, but so limp and powerless had he become that the executioner had the greatest difficulty in adjusting his head upon the block. Even then he must have moved almost unconsciously, for when the string was pulled and the axe fell, it hit the wretched man between the neck and the shoulder. The executioner, seeing what had happened, seized a huge knife and literally hacked off his head, whereupon the bystanders leaped in wild rage upon the scaffold and with shrieks that rent the air seized the clumsy executioner, and would have torn him limb from limb had not the _sbirri_ (policemen) hastened to his rescue. A free fight ensued which was only put an end to by the arrival of soldiers from the castle of St. Angelo. The executioner was flogged round the streets of Rome the following morning, and then exiled from the papal states. Another gruesome picture of a public execution, at a somewhat later date, is described by an eye-witness in the following words: