Well, but there was his old uncle, the Pope, who had a good deal more on his conscience than he had, and must be a good deal nearer that catastrophe than he was, he was so much older!--and how comfortably he took it all!--washing the pilgrims' feet, blessing the horses, borne aloft in that tottering seat between the two great fans of ostrich feathers, stretching out his fingers in continual benediction--the king--the vice-God of the hour--forgiving the sins of all the world--_he_ seemed to get through it all very well-- But, just as the Cardinal had reached this point, Pope Clement _died_--and how did the people show their sense of his holiness? He died on the 26th of September, 1534; just two months after the sack of Fondi; and during the period between his decease and the election of a successor, the contempt and hatred of the Romans showed themselves by the most outrageous insults to his memory. Night after night, his bier was broken and defaced. On one occasion his body was actually torn from its grave-clothes, and found in the morning transfixed with a sword. And there were those who scrupled not to say it would have been dragged through the streets with a hook, but for respect for Cardinal Ippolito. All this was very terrible for Ippolito. Death, in all its grisly horrors, and without any of its holy and softening associations, was brought before him whether he would or no; with no sacrament of tears and blessings, no cherished memories of the last look, the last sigh; no death-bed sanctities. And then the new Pope, Paul the Third, was a Farnese. The Medici party had gone out, the Farnese party had come in; and Ippolito was looked on as an enviable pluralist, whose benefices the new Pope's friends would gladly share. Ippolito knew it was so, because it must be so: it would not be Roman human nature if it had been otherwise. And in the night, he would lie awake and think, "What a juggle, and a struggle, and a farce it all is!--What a seeming, and a sham!--Why did I ever accept this detestable hat? Why should I have been put off with it? Why should not I have been Grand Duke of Florence instead of Alessandro? I am of the elder branch, and any way I would have played my part better. O, Giulia, why would not you have me? It would have been better for both of us!" And he got into the way of fancying that all his faults were _her_ fault.