punishment, ordered his hands to be cut off, and his tongue to be
bored, "to prevent him from being so witty for the future." This act,
says Leti, "filled every one with terror and amazement." And well
might such a piece of Oriental barbarity excite the horror of the
Romans.[11] Pasquin, however, was not alarmed, and a few days
afterward he appeared holding a wet shirt to dry in the sun. It was a
Sunday morning, and Marforio, naturally surprised at such a violation
of the day, asked him why he could not wait till Monday before drying
it Pasquin answered, that there was no time to lose; for, if he waited
till to-morrow to dry his shirt, he might have to pay for the
sunshine;--hinting at the heavy taxes which Sixtus had laid upon the
necessaries of life, and from which the sunshine itself might not long
be exempt.

It was near about this time that a caricature was circulated in Rome,
representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly
attempting to escape from his devouring beak. _Merito haec patimur_,
"We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral
it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the
harshest applications, and the despotic severity of Sixtus did much to
restore decency and security to life. He left the Romans in a far
better condition than he found them; and it would have been well for
Rome, if among his successors there had been more to follow his
example in repressing vice and violence,--in a word, had there been
more King Storks and fewer King Logs.

The most poetic of pasquinades, and one in which wit rises into
imagination, belongs to the pontificate of Urban VIII. (1623-1644.)
This Pope issued a bull excommunicating all persons who took snuff in
the churches of Seville; whereupon Pasquin quoted the following verse