The explanation of the extraordinary state of things above described is to be found in the custom which existed of sacking the apartments of the deceased pope as soon as ever the breath was out of his body. The utter lawlessness which prevailed at Rome _sede vacante_--that is to say, during the interval between the death of one pope and the election of his successor--was not, indeed, confined to the residence of the departed pontiff. Throughout Rome all law used to be on those occasions in abeyance. The streets were scenes of the most unbridled excesses and violence of all sorts. That was the time for the satisfying of old grudges. Murder was as common as murderous hate; and no man's life was safe save in so far as his own hand or his own walls could protect it. And walls did not always avail. I find a petition to Leo X. from a monastery in Rome, setting forth that a document assuring certain indulgences to the house had been lost at the time of the sack and plunder of the convent during the last conclave. No sort of claim, it is to be observed, is attempted to be set up of redress for the plunder and destruction of the property of the convent; only a prayer that the privileges in question might be again granted in consideration of the loss of the document. A very curious illustration of Roman manners in the sixteenth century is to be found in a practice with regard to these periods of interregnum which I find recorded by Cancellieri in his work on the conclaves. Roman wives, it seems, were forbidden--not without reason--to leave their homes and go forth into the streets of Rome at their pleasure. But in the articles of the marriage contract it was stipulated that the lady should be free to go out on certain specified occasions, mainly ecclesiastical festivals; and among these it was always specially provided that the lady might go out during the days of the exposition of the body of a deceased pope for the purpose of kissing his feet. One would have thought that, looking to the state of things in the city, the time of the interregnum would have been the very last to select for ladies to venture into the streets. It would seem, however, that the Roman matrons thought otherwise. Cancellieri says that it was in those days a common saying among Roman ladies that "Happy were they who were married to Spaniards!" For it would seem that the Spanish husbands in Rome did not think it necessary to enforce this restraint on their wives--a circumstance that rather curiously contradicts our general notions of Spanish marital feelings and discipline.