His
Holiness in exchange for the 799,000 livres in gold that he had got from
them.

But it seemed as though God wished to show His strange vicar on earth
that He was angered by the mockery of sacred things, and on the Eve of
St. Peter's Day, just as the pope was passing the Capanile on his way to
the tribune of benedictions, a enormous piece of iron broke off and fell
at his feet; and then, as though one warning had not been enough, on the
next day, St. Peter's, when the pope happened to be in one of the rooms
of his ordinary dwelling with Cardinal Capuano and Monsignare Poto, his
private chamberlain, he saw through the open windows that a very black
cloud was coming up. Foreseeing a thunderstorm, he ordered the cardinal
and the chamberlain to shut the windows. He had not been mistaken; for
even as they were obeying his command, there came up such a furious gust
of wind that the highest chimney of the Vatican was overturned, just as a
tree is rooted up, and was dashed upon the roof, breaking it in; smashing
the upper flooring, it fell into the very room where they were.
Terrified by the noise of this catastrophe, which made the whole palace
tremble, the cardinal and Monsignore Poto turned round, and seeing the
room full of dust and debris, sprang out upon the parapet and shouted to
the guards at the gate, "The pope is dead, the pope is dead!" At this
cry, the guards ran up and discovered three persons lying in the rubbish
on the floor, one dead and the other two dying. The dead man was a
gentleman of Siena ailed Lorenzo Chigi, and the dying were two resident
officials of the Vatican. They had been walking across the floor above,
and had been flung down with the debris. But Alexander was not to be
found; and as he gave no answer, though they kept on calling to him, the
belief that he had perished was confirmed, and very soon spread about the
town. But he had only fainted, and at the end of a certain time he began
to come to himself, and moaned, whereupon he was discovered, dazed with
the blow, and injured, though not seriously, in several parts of his
body. He had been saved by little short of a miracle: a beam had broken
in half and had left each of its two ends in the side walls; and one of
these had formed a sort of roof aver the pontifical throne; the pope, who
was sitting there at the time, was protected by this overarching beam,
and had received only a few contusions.

The two contradictory reports of the