manage the ceremony of their entry into Rome and the reception, and
Lucrezia, who enjoyed at her father's side an amount of favour hitherto
unheard of at the papal court, desired on her part to contribute all the
splendour she had it in her power to add. He therefore went to receive
the young people with a stately and magnificent escort of lords and
cardinals, while she awaited them attended by the loveliest and noblest
ladies of Rome, in one of the halls of the Vatican. A throne was there
prepared for the pope, and at his feet were cushions far Lucrezia and
Dona Sancia. "Thus," writes Tommaso Tommasi, "by the look of the
assembly and the sort of conversation that went on for hours, you would
suppose you were present at some magnificent and voluptuous royal
audience of ancient Assyria, rather than at the severe consistory of a
Roman pontiff, whose solemn duty it is to exhibit in every act the
sanctity of the name he bears. But," continues the same historian, "if
the Eve of Pentecost was spent in such worthy functions, the celebrations
of the coming of the Holy Ghost on the following day were no less
decorous and becoming to the spirit of the Church; for thus writes the
master of the ceremonies in his journal:

"'The pope made his entry into the Church of the Holy Apostles, and
beside him on the marble steps of the pulpit where the canons of St.
Peter are wont to chant the Epistle and Gospel, sat Lucrezia his daughter
and Sancia his son's wife: round about them, a disgrace to the Church and
a public scandal, were grouped a number of other Roman ladies far more
fit to dwell in Messalina's city than in St. Peter's.'"

So at Rome and Naples did men slumber while ruin was at hand; so did they
waste their time and squander their money in a vain display of pride; and
this was going on while the French, thoroughly alive, were busy laying
hands upon the torches with which they would presently set Italy on fire.