from day to day did the evil grow so much, that had the making a new Pope been deferred as long as it once seemed likely, through the dissensions of the Cardinals, there was ground to apprehend many other strange and most grievous inconyeniences.' Against such an all-pervading spirit of law- lessness it was a very inadequate provision for making the streets safe at night that every householder was bound to hang out a lamp before his dwelling during the period of interregnum. Even now, Rome is, of all capitals in Europe, the least pleasant to walk about in the dark; but scandalously unsafe as its streets are, their cndition is yet a very pale copy of the state they were habitually reduced to, as it were by privilege,[1] during the pandemonium season of former Conclaves.
- ↑ In the Lettere Facete e Piacevole di dit'ersi Huomini Grandi, 2 vols., Venice, 1601, is a letter from Messer Giulio Constantini, Secretary to the Cardinal of Trani, which gives a lively picture of the state of Rome during the intenegnum on death of Paul III. (1550.) It stands twice in the same collection—as a fragment, vol. i. p. 389, and in full, vol. ii. p. 1-16. 'Now, Signori, I have told you about the Papacy all I can call to mind of the late occurrences,' writes Messer Giulio, 'There remains only for me to tell of the delight of an interreguum, as Fra Bacio said to Pope
