the Barbarini, nicknamed the Mosche, or Flies, from the
circumstance of bees being their armorial bearing. The Emperor
having exhausted all his money in endeavouring to defend the church
against Gustavus Adolphus, the great King of Sweden, who was bent
on its destruction, applied in his necessity to the Pope for a loan
of money. The Pope, however, and his relations, whose cellars were
at that time full of the money of the church, which they had been
plundering for years, refused to lend him a scudo; whereupon a
pasquinade picture was stuck up at Rome, representing the church
lying on a bed, gashed with dreadful wounds, and beset all over
with flies, which were sucking her, whilst the Emperor of Germany
was kneeling before her with a miserable face, requesting a little
money towards carrying on the war against the heretics, to which
the poor church was made to say: 'How can I assist you, O my
champion, do you not see that the flies have sucked me to the very
bones?' Which story," said he, "shows that the idea of going to
Rome for money was not quite so original as I imagined the other
night, though utterly preposterous.

"This affair," said he, "occurred in what were called the days of
nepotism. Certain popes, who wished to make themselves in some
degree independent of the cardinals, surrounded themselves with
their nephews and the rest of their family, who sucked the church
and Christendom as much as they could, none doing so more
effectually than the relations of Urban the Eighth, at whose death,
according to the book called the 'Nipotismo di Roma,' there were in
the Barbarini family two hundred and twenty-seven governments,
abbeys and high dignities; and so much hard cash in their
possession, that threescore and ten mules were scarcely sufficient
to convey the plunder of one of them to Palestrina." He added,