him that he had interchanged with Piccinino. He sprang to his feet: "What! do you imagine that I am a prisoner in your hands?" "Quite otherwise," answered Lodovico Petroni, one of the Fifteen, seizing hold of his cloak. At the signal armed men rushed in--they had been lying in wait in the room beyond--and stabbed him to death. The still quivering body was dragged to the window and hurled out on to the pavement below. Later on, it was carried to the Duomo and buried [Illustration: The Market Place] near the Campanile, without any honour or name to mark the spot. That same night the Balìa notified to the Pope and their other allies what had been done. To his Holiness they declared that "this astute seminator of evil, this your insidious foe, this traitor to our Republic" had been done to death by the people in a tumult; to the Duke of Milan they sent a piece of his cloak, drenched in blood; to Venice and to Florence they told the truth, pleading the sacred duty of saving the State, citing as precedents the deaths of Carmagnola and Baldaccio d'Anghiari. Pope Calixtus insisted that they should justify themselves by publishing the evidence, and when this was done, on September 18th, he absolved the Fifteen, each severally by name. But to the appeal of the Sienese envoys for a general absolution for all the people of the city, he replied that he could not grant it, "because you Sienese would be too strong in Paradise."[75] Two antique coffers in this room--one of them with the Lupa carved by Antonio Barili--are also worthy of notice. In the Loggia on the second floor of the Palace is a frescoed Madonna and Child by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The second door to the left of the wolf in the Piazza leads, through a picturesque little court covered with old frescoes, to a series of rooms on the ground floor, at present used by the municipality. In the _Sala dei Signori di Biccherna_, the room in which the Camarlingo and Quattro Provveditori met, is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, a fresco painted in 1445 by Sano di Pietro. Two of the Angels are holding a scroll with a poem, thus blending painting and poetry together in the characteristic early Sienese way: "This blessed glorious Virgin pure, Daughter of her Son and Spouse and Mother--because the Eternal Father found her more humble than any other person, He giveth her here the crown of the Universe. Virgin Mother of the Eternal God, by whose holy hands thou art crowned, to thee be recommended the devout and faithful city of Siena, as it hopeth in thee; hail, full of grace." The San Bernardino on the right is also by Sano. In the same room there is a small fresco by Bazzi--the Madonna and Child with the little St John, St Michael Archangel and St Galganus. Like all his work in the Palace it is late, about 1537, but, unlike the rest, it is badly drawn and carelessly executed.