to disarm the satirist:--"Here lies Adrian VI., who esteemed nothing
in his life more unhappy than that he had been called to rule":
"_Adrianus VI. hîc situs est, qui nil sibi infelicius in vitâ quam
quod imperaret duxit."

During the pontificate of Clement VII., Rome suffered under calamities
too terrible and too depressing to admit of the frequent display of
the humor or the satire of Pasquin. The siege and sack of the city by
the army of the Constable de Bourbon wrought too much misery to be set
in verse or to be sharpened in epigram. One shrewd jest of this time
has, indeed, been preserved. Clement was for months a prisoner in the
Castle of Sant' Angelo, unable to stir abroad. "_Papa non potest
errare_" said Pasquin, or one of his friends, with a play on the
double meaning of the last word, and a scoff at Papal pretension: "The
Pope cannot err": he is too well guarded to stray. But when the Pope
died in 1534, Pasquin did not spare his memory. He had lately changed
his physician, and taken one named Matteo Curzio or Curtius; and when
his death took place, not without suspicion of malpractice, the
satisfaction of the people was expressed by the appearance of a
portrait of this new doctor, with the inscription, in words borrowed
from the Vulgate, "_Ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi!_"
"Curtius has killed Clement," said Pasquin. "Curtius, who has secured
the public health, should be rewarded."

"Curtis occidit Clementem. Curtius auro
Donandus, per quem publica parta salus."

Nor was this all. Pasquin declared, that, on occasion of Clement's
death, a bitter strife arose between Pluto and Saint Peter as to which
should receive the Pope:--