For his house is eating him up.’
“With Paul III. ceases the record of the Pasquillorum Tomi Duo, published at Eleutheropolis in 1544, and we now hunt out only rarely here and there an epigram. Against Sextus V., that cruel, stern old man, who never lifted his eyes from the ground until he had attained that great reward for all his hypocritical humility, the papal chair, several epigrams are recorded. One of these, in the form of dialogue, and given by Leti in his life of Sextus, is worth recording for the story connected with it. Pasquin makes his appearance in a very dirty shirt, and being asked by Marforio the reason of this, answers that he cannot procure a clean shirt because his washerwoman has been made a princess by the Pope; thus referring to the story that the Pope’s sister had formerly been a laundress. This soon came to the ears of the Pope, who ordered that the satirist should be sought for and punished severely. All researches, however, were vain. At last, by his order and in his name, placards were posted in the public streets, promising, in case the author would reveal his name, to grant him not only his life, but a present of a thousand pistoles; but threatening, in case of his discovery by any other person, to hang him forthwith, and give the reward to the informer. The satirist thereupon avowed the authorship and demanded the money. Sextus, true to the letter of his proclamation, granted him his life and paid him the one thousand pistoles; but in utter violation of its spirit, and saying that he had not promised absolution from all punishment, ordered his hands to be struck off and his tongue to be bored, ‘to hinder him from being so witty in future.’
“But Pasquin was not silenced even by this cruel revenge, and a short time after, in reference to the tyranny of Sextus, appeared a caricature representing the Pope as King Stork devouring the Romans as frogs, with the motto, ‘Merito haec patimur,’ i.e. ‘Serves us right.’
“Against Urban VIII., the Barberini Pope, whose noble palace was built out of the quarry of the Colosseum, who tore the bronze plates from the roof of the Pantheon, to cast into the tasteless baldacchino of St. Peter’s, and under whose pontificate so many antique buildings were destroyed, Pasquin uttered the famous saying—
“‘What the barbarians have left undone, the Barberini have done.’
“And on the occasion of Urban’s issuing a bull, excommunicating all persons who took snuff in the churches at Seville, Pasquin quoted from Job this passage, ‘Against a leaf driven to and fro by the wind, wilt thou show thy strength? and wilt thou pursue the light stubble?’
“The ignorant, indolent, profligate Innocent X., with the equally profligate Donna Olympia Maidalchini, afforded also a target to Pasquin’s arrows. Of the Pope, he says—
“‘Olympia he loves more than Olympus.’
“During the reign of Innocent XI., the Holy Office flourished, and its prisons were put in requisition for those who dared to speak freely or to think freely. Pasquin, in reference to this, says: ‘Se parliamo, in galera; se scriviamo, impiccati; se stiamo in quiete, al Santo Uffizio. Eh!—che bisogna fare?’ (If we speak, to the galleys; if we write, to the gallows; if we keep quiet, to the Inquisition. Eh!—what are we to do?)
“Throughout Rome, the stranger is struck by the constant recurrence of the inscription, ‘Munificentia Pii Sexti’ (By the munificence of Pius VI.), on statues and monuments and repaired ruins, and big and little antiquities. When, therefore, this Pope reduced the loaf of two baiocchi considerably in size, one of them was found hung on Pasquin’s neck, with the same inscription, ‘Munificentia Pii Sexti.’