Imagine the consternation in Rome on the 15th of February, the day
following the tragic death of the Cardinal Procopio and his two
abettors. Great, in truth, was the agitation of the city when the three
bodies were seen dangling from the upper window of the palace. The panic
spread rapidly, and the immense crowd under the facade increased
more and more, until a battalion of foreign soldiers, sent for by
the terrified priests, appeared in the Lungara, and driving it back,
surrounded and entered the palace. To tell the truth, the soldiers
laughed sometimes at the jests, coarse but witty, which were flung by
the mob at the three corpses as they commenced hauling them up. Many
were the bitter things that passed below.
"Let them down head over heels," shouted one; "your work will be
finished the sooner."
"Play the fish steadily, that they may not slip from the hook," hallooed
another.
By-and-by the cord to which the corpulent body of the prelate was
attached broke as the soldiers attempted to hoist it up, and hoarser
than ever were the shouts of laughter with which it was greeted as it
fell with a heavy shock upon the pavement.
Muzio, who was surveying the avenging spectacle, turned to Silvio,
saying, with a shudder, "Let us away; this laughter is not to my taste
now they have paid their debt.
"In truth, Pasquin is almost the only real memorial of ancient Rome.
Would that my people possessed the gravity and force of those times,
when our forefathers elected the great dictators, or bought and sold,
at a high price, the lands upon which Hannibal was at the time attacked.
But it must be long before their souls can be freed from the plague of
priestly corruption, and before they can once more be worthy of their
ancient fame and name."
"We must have patience with them," replied Silvio. "Slavery reduces man
to the level of the beast These priests have themselves inculcated the
rude mockery which we hear. At least, it could have no fitter objects
than those dead carcasses. Reproach not the people to-day--mud is good
enough for dead dogs."
Thus discoursing, the friends made their way through the crowd, and
separated, having first appointed to meet at the end of the week in the
studio of Attilio.
On the day in question they found the young artist at home, and gave him
a detailed account of what they had witnessed under the palace windows.
It was the time for the reassembling of the Three Hundred, but, before
setting out to meet their associates at the Baths of Caracalla, they lay
down to rest for a few hours; and while they slumber we will give some
account of the place of assignation.
Masters of the world, and wealthy beyond compute from its manifold
spoils, the ancient Romans gave themselves up, in the later days of the
Republic, to fashion, luxuriousness, and excesses of all kinds. The
toil of the field--whether of battle or of agriculture--although it had
conduced to make them hardy and healthy before their triumphs, had now
become distasteful and odious. Their limbs, rendered effeminate by a
new and fatal voluptuousness, grew at last unequal even to the weight of
their arms, and they chose out the stoutest from among their slaves
to serve as soldiers. The foreign people by whom they were surrounded
failed not to note the advantage which time and change were preparing
for them over their dissolute masters. They rose with Goth and Ostrogoth
to free themselves from the heavy yoke. They fell upon the queenly city
on all sides, and discrowned her of her imperial diadem.
Such was the fate of that gigantic empire, which fell, as all powers
ought to fall which are based on violence and injustice.
One of the chief imported luxuries of the degenerate Romans were the
thermae, or baths, edifices upon which immense sums were lavished to make
them beautiful and commodious in the extreme. Some were private, others
public. The emperors vied with each other to render them celebrated and
attractive. Caracalla, the unworthy son of Severus, and one of the very
vilest of the line of Caesars, built the vast pile which is still called
by his evil name; the ruins of which forcibly illustrate the splendor
of the past sovereignty, and the reasons of its swift decay. The greater
number of these conspicuous and magnificent buildings in the city of
Rome have subterranean passages attached to them, provided by their
original possessors as a means of escape in times of danger, or to
conceal the results of rapine or violence. In the subterranean passages
connected with the Baths of Caracalla it was that the Three Hundred had
agreed to meet, and as the darkness of night crept on, the outposts of
the conspirators, like gliding shadows, planted themselves silently at
the approaches to the wilderness of antique stones, from time to time
challenging, in a whisper, other and more numerous shadows, which
by-and-by converged to the spot.