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was a very good imitation indeed.
We talked about the book. I touched upon the great problem that
requires solutionthe harmonising and justifying of the
contradictory opposites in Renaissance character: Fra Lippo Lippi
breaking his own vows and breaking a nun's for her; Perugino
leading his moneygrubbing, morose life and painting ethereal
saints and madonnas in his _bottega_, while the Baglioni filled
the streets outside with slaughter; Lorenzo de' Medici bleeding
literally and figuratively his fellowcitizens, going from that
occupation to his Platonic Academy and disputing on the
immortality of the soul, winding up with orgies of sensual
depravity with his boon companion Pulci, and all the time making
himself an historic name for statecraft; Pope Sixtus IV, at the
very heart of the Pazzi conspiracy to murder the Medici
And Pope Nicholas V when drunk ordering a man to be executed,
and being sorry for it when sober, said Judith.
It is wonderful how Judith, with her quite unspecialised
knowledge of history can now and then put her finger upon
something vital. I have been racking my brain and searching my
library for the past two or three days for an illustration of
just that nature. I had not thought of it. Here is Tomaso da
Sarzana, a quiet, retired schoolmaster, like myself, an editor of
classical texts, a peaceful librarian of Cosmo de' Medici, a
scholar and a gentleman to the tips of his fingers; he is made
Pope, a King Log to save the cardinalate from a possible King
Stork Colonna; the Porcari conspiracy breaks out, is discovered
and the conspirators are hunted over Italy and put to death; a
gentleman called Anguillara is slightly inculpated; he is invited
to Rome by Nicholas, and given a safeconduct; when he arrives
the Pope is drunk (at least Stefano Infessura, the contemporary
diarist, says so); the next morning his Holiness finds to his
surprise and annoyance that the gentleman's head has been cut off
by his orders. It is an amazing tale. To realise how amazing it
is, one must picture the fantastic possibility of it happening at
the Vatican nowadays. And the most astounding thing is this:
that if all the dead and gone popes were alive, and the soul of
the saintly Pontiff of today were to pass from him, the one who
could most undetected occupy his simulacrum would be this very
Thomas of Sarzana.
Pardon me, my dear Judith, said I. But this is a story lying
somewhat up one of the backwaters of history. Where did you
come across it?
I saw it the other day in a French comic paper, replied Judith.
I really don't know which to admire the more: the inconsequent

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