Pius IV., a Pope of a certain reforming vigour, issued in 1562 a long Bull, repeating older regulations for a Conclave that seemed to require being called to mind, and forbidding a variety of abuses which had cropped up. The twenty-first clause runs thus:-' Also we forbid wagers, quas excommissas vocant, being made on a pending Papal election; and decree that if against these
Paul, who, when asked what was the finest festival in Rome, replied, "When a Pope dies and a new one is being made," in which he spoke true. For on occurrence of the former event you see the whole world run to arms, the prisons thrown open, the Sbirri fly, and the jailers hide. In the streets you must not think to find aught but pikes and partisans and firelocks, and never a man by himself, but squadrons of ten or twenty or thirty and more. Yet with all this license you should not fancy that much harm is done except between special enemies in the burst of passion, which time soothes down, so that to-day Rome might be traversed a bracche calate; and for my part during fifteen barren years that I have spent in it, never have I enjoyed, and never have I beheld, a finer time, nor greater liberty, nor rarer fun; and would ye have it otherwise when our masters are all locked up? while we are at liberty, eating off our heads, without a thought or an inconvenience of servitude, until there is such a surfeit of good that we repine at all this freedom. And then the amusement to hear the jabbering brokers in the Banchi who buy and sell and barter on odds so that whoever falls among them will never get away till after night-fall;' and here the Cardinal's Secretary proceeds to dilate with a detail not fit for repetition on the public
