quite so original as I supposed. After leaving you the other night I
remembered having read of an emperor of Germany who conceived the idea of
applying to Rome for money, and actually put it into practice.

"Urban the Eighth then occupied the papal chair, of the family of the
Barbarini, nicknamed the Mosche, or Flies, from the circumstance of bees
being their armorial bearing. The Emperor having exhausted all his money
in endeavouring to defend the church against Gustavus Adolphus, the great
King of Sweden, who was bent on its destruction, applied in his necessity
to the Pope for a loan of money. The Pope, however, and his relations,
whose cellars were at that time full of the money of the church, which
they had been plundering for years, refused to lend him a scudo;
whereupon a pasquinade picture was stuck up at Rome, representing the
church lying on a bed, gashed with dreadful wounds, and beset all over
with flies, which were sucking her, whilst the Emperor of Germany was
kneeling before her with a miserable face, requesting a little money
towards carrying on the war against the heretics, to which the poor
church was made to say: 'How can I assist you, O my champion, do you not
see that the flies have sucked me to the very bones?' Which story," said
he, "shows that the idea of going to Rome for money was not quite so
original as I imagined the other night, though utterly preposterous.

"This affair," said he, "occurred in what were called the days of
nepotism. Certain popes, who wished to make themselves in some degree
independent of the cardinals, surrounded themselves with their nephews,
and the rest of their family, who sucked the church and Christendom as
much as they could, none doing so more effectually than the relations of
Urban the Eighth, at whose death, according to the book called the
'Nipotismo di Roma,' there were in the Barbarini family two hundred and
twenty-seven governments, abbeys, and high dignities; and so much hard
cash in their possession that threescore and ten mules were scarcely
sufficient to convey the plunder of one of them to Palestrina." He
added, however, that it was probable that Christendom fared better whilst
the popes were thus independent, as it was less sucked, whereas before
and after that period, it was sucked by hundreds instead of tens, by the
cardinals and all their relations, instead of by the pope and his nephews
only.

Then, after drinking rather copiously of his hol