In his life of Adrian VI., the successor of Leo X., Paulus Jovius, not
indeed the most trustworthy of authorities, tells a story which, if
not true, might well be so. He says, that the Pope, being vexed at the
free speech of Pasquin, proposed to have him thrown into the Tiber,
thinking thus to stop his tongue; but the Spanish legate dissuaded
him, by suggesting, with grave Spanish wisdom, that all the frogs of
the river, becoming infected with his spirit, would adopt his style of
speech and croak only pasquinades. The contemptibleness of the
assailant made him the more dreaded. Did not the very reeds tell the
fatal secret about King Midas?

Pasquin was by no means the only figure in Rome who gave expression to
thoughts and feelings which it would have been dangerous to the living
subjects of the ecclesiastical rule to utter aloud. His most
distinguished companion was Marforio, a colossal statue of an ocean or
river god, which was discovered in the sixteenth century near the
forum of Mars, from which he derived his name. Toward the end of the
same century, he was placed in the lower court of the Palazzo de'
Conservatori, on the Capitol, and here he has since remained.
Dialogues were often carried on between him and his friend Pasquin,
and a share in their conversation was sometimes taken by the Facchino,
or so called Porter of the Palazzo Piombino. In his "Roma Nova,"
published in 1660, Sprenger says that Pasquin was assigned to the
nobles, Marforio to the citizens, and the Facchino to the common
people. But besides these there were the Abate Luigi of the Palazzo
Valle,--Madama Lucrezia, who still sits behind the Venetian palace
near the Church of St. Mark,--the Baboon, from which the Via Babbuino
takes its name,--and the marble portrait of Scanderbeg, the great
enemy of the Turks, on the _façade_ of the house which he at one time
occupied in Rome. Each of these personages now and then issued an