We remarked in Italy, and especially in Rome, that very few of the churches have clocks, there being fewer in Rome than in the meanest French village. Also very few images are to be seen, save those made recently, several ancient churches being quite bare thereof. On January 14th M. de Montaigne saw the execution of two brothers, formerly servants of the Castellan’s secretary, who some days ago slew their master by night in the palace of Signor Jacomo Buoncompagno, the Pope’s son. Their flesh was torn with pincers and their hands cut off, in front of the aforesaid palace, and after this mutilation they put over the wounds the bodies of capons which they had killed and cut open just before.[86] This execution took place on a scaffold, where the criminals were first knocked down with heavy wooden clubs, and then their throats were cut; it is, so the report goes, a form of punishment used in Rome from time to time, but some held that it had been specially appointed for this misdeed, for that the criminals had killed their master in like manner. As to the bigness of Rome, M. de Montaigne declared that the space which the walls enclose, more than a third thereof being void, and the site of old and new Rome as well, would equal an enclosure made round Paris to take in all the faubourgs. But, reckoning the bulk of the two cities by the number and closeness of the houses and inhabitants, he deemed that Rome would fall short of Paris by one-third. In number and grandeur of public places, and in beauty of streets and palaces, Rome seemed far superior. He found the cold of winter little less bitter than that of Gascony. About Christmas there were sharp frosts and the wind was intolerably cold; and after that it frequently thundered, hailed, and lightened. In the palaces the suites of apartments are large, one room after the other, and you may have to pass through three or four rooms before you come to the chief saloon. In certain houses where M. de Montaigne dined in ceremony the buffet was not set in the dining-room, but in one adjoining, whither the servants would go to fetch drink for whomsoever might call for it; there too was displayed the silver plate. [Illustration: CLOACA MAXIMA _From Piranesi’s Views of Rome_ _To face p. 94_, vol. ii. ]