In this respect, a clear proof of his insanity is to be found in the letter which he wrote in the elation of his victory over the barons. Not to dwell on the strange familiarity with the Deity which he shows, when he writes “that God formed to war those fingers which had been trained to the use of the pen” (whereas, as a matter of fact, he had no knowledge whatever of the art of war), it is well to note that, among his gravest charges against the Colonna was that of their having sacked a church where _he had deposited his golden crown_. Still more strange is the following claim to prophecy, addressed to the clergy--who, as dealing in such matters, are likely to be most sceptical concerning them: “We should not forget to tell you that, two days before these occurrences, we had a vision of Pope Boniface, who foretold our triumph over those tyrants. We made a report thereof in full season, and in the presence of the assembled Romans, and going into St. Peter’s, to the altar of St. Boniface, we presented to him a chalice and a veil. “The vision, at last, thanks to Heaven, was fulfilled, thanks to the help of the Blessed Martin, His tribune.” (Here he forgets that, two pages previously, in the same letter, he had attributed his victories to St. Laurence and St. Stephen.) “As those traitors,” he continues, “had plundered the pilgrims on the day of his festival, that Saint took vengeance on them, by the hand of a _tribune_, _three_ days afterwards, that is to say, on the day of _St. Columba_, who glorified the dove (_colomba_) of our flag.” Note the puns in the above. He concludes with some of those postscripts which are so frequent in the letters of monomaniacs, and are found in nearly all of his: “Given at the Capitol, on the very day of the victory--the 3rd of November, on which day there perished six tyrants of the house of Colonna, and none remained but the unhappy old man Stefano Colonna, who is half dead. He is the seventh, and this is how Heaven was willing to make the number of the slain Colonna equal the crowns (_sic_) of our coronation,[413] and to the branches of the fruit-bearing tree which recall the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Absolute insanity is here shown, both in the idea and the word, in which he makes the Deity intervene to extinguish a family of heroes for the sake of a sinister freak of language, in honour of the man who, a few pages previously--with a hypocrisy soon belied by facts--had written, “Consistently with our character, we were not willing to employ the severity of the sword--however just--against those whom we might bring back to grace without injury to freedom, justice, and peace.”