When his residence in the Capitol was sacked, after his first flight, what most surprised those who entered his private office was the mass of letters which had been drafted and never sent. It was well known that the numerous staff of clerks employed by him could not keep pace with the amount of matter he dictated, and that he was continually sending couriers not only to friendly republics, but to indifferent or hostile potentates, like the King of France, who sent a jesting reply by an archer--a functionary somewhat analogous to a modern policeman. Thus, too, the lords of Ferrara, Mantua, and Padua returned him his letters. Add to this their style, their exaggerated length, the addition of postscripts longer than the letter itself, and the singular signature, richer in laudatory titles than was ever used except by Oriental princes. These letters have, indeed, a flavour of their own, a vivacity breaking loose from the restraints of the classical writers who served as his models, an exuberant self-confidence which, at first sight, obliged the reader to put faith in the falsehoods with which they swarmed. Nay, it seems that--as happens with some lunatics, and some incorrigible liars--he ended by himself believing in his own fictions. Leaving aside many strange blunders, surprising in a Latin scholar,[412] and the prolixity already mentioned, without dwelling on the very undiplomatic want of delicacy, present to a morbid extent, and all the more surprising in a statesman of that age, when reserve was more general than at present, one fact particularly strikes me--an inveterate habit of punning, a symptom of extreme frivolity, which was certainly not a characteristic of mediæval diplomacy. What man in his senses would, even in the depths of the Dark Ages, have written as he did to Pope Clement, in the letter dated August 5, 1347?-- “The grace of the Holy Spirit having freed the Republic under my rule, and my humble person having been, at the beginning of _August_, promoted to the militia, there is attributed to me, as in the signature, the name and title of _August_. “Given as above on the 5th of August, “HUMBLE CREATURE, “Candidate of the Holy Spirit, Nicolò the Severe and Clement, Liberator of the City, Zealous for Italy, Lover of the World, who kisses the feet of the blessed.” Note that, after all this signature, the letter goes on for three pages more, on much more serious topics, which he had postponed to the pun on “August.”