On January 3rd, 1581, the Pope passed beneath our windows, and before him went some two hundred horses belonging to personages of the court, of one robe or the other. Close beside him was the Cardinal dei Medici, who conversed with him covered, and took him to his house to dinner. The Pope wore a red hat, a white garment, and a red velvet cowl, as is the habit. He was mounted on a white hackney, harnessed with red velvet, and with fringe and lace of gold. Though he was nearly eighty-one, he mounted without any aid, and every fifteen paces or so he gave his benediction. After him came three cardinals, and then some hundred men-at-arms, each with lance on thigh, and fully armoured save the head. They had in readiness also another hackney with like equipment, a mule, a handsome white courser, and a litter. Also two robe-bearers with valises at their saddle-bows. On January 11th, in the morning, as M. de Montaigne was leaving the house on horseback to go to the bank, he met Catena,[84] a famous robber and banditti chief, whom they were taking away from the prison. This man had raised a panic all through Italy, monstrous tales of murder being told about him; notably concerning two Capuchins, whom he forced to deny God, and promised to spare their lives on this condition. But he slew them afterwards without any motive either of gain or of vengeance. M. de Montaigne halted to behold the spectacle. Over and beyond the escort customary in France, they let precede the criminal a huge crucifix draped with black, at the foot of which went a great crowd of men wearing cloaks and masks of cloth, and these were said to be of the chief gentlefolk of Rome, a confraternity sworn to accompany criminals to execution and corpses to the grave. Two of these--or two monks in similar garb--helped the condemned man into the cart and preached to him, one of them letting him kiss continually a picture of our Lord. This they did so that those in the street might not see the man’s face. At the gibbet, which was a beam upon two posts, they held this picture before his face till he was thrown off the ladder. He died as criminals commonly do, without movement or cry; a dark man of thirty or thereabout, and after he was strangled they cut his body in four quarters. It is the custom amongst these people to kill criminals without torture, and after death to subject the body to very barbarous usage. M. de Montaigne remarked that he had written elsewhere how deeply people are moved by the cruelties practised upon dead bodies,[85] and on this occasion the crowd, who had not felt any pity at the hanging, cried out in lamentation at every stroke of the axe. As soon as he was dead divers Jesuits or other churchmen went up to a high place and cried to the people on all sides that they should take to heart this example.