one end of the world to the other.

But in accordance with that religious feeling towards death which all men
instinctively feel, and which alone survives every other, even in the
heart of the atheist, the bier was taken up again and carried to the foot
of the great altar in St. Peter's, where, set on trestles, it was exposed
to public view; but the body had become so black, so deformed and
swollen, that it was horrible to behold; from its nose a bloody matter
escaped, the mouth gaped hideously, and the tongue was so monstrously
enlarged that it filled the whole cavity; to this frightful appearance
was added a decomposition so great that, although at the pope's funeral
it is customary to kiss the hand which bore the Fisherman's ring, not one
approached to offer this mark of respect and religious reverence to the
representative of God on earth.

Towards seven o'clock in the evening, when the declining day adds so deep
a melancholy to the silence of a church, four porters and two working
carpenters carried the corpse into the chapel where it was to be
interred, and, lifting it off the catafalque, where it lay in state, put
it in the coffin which was to be its last abode; but it was found that
the coffin was too short, and the body could not be got in till the legs
were bent and thrust in with violent blows; then the carpenters put on
the lid, and while one of them sat on the top to force the knees to bend,
the others hammered in the nails: amid those Shakespearian pleasantries
that sound as the last orison in the ear of the mighty; then, says
Tommaso Tommasi, he was placed on the right of the great altar of St.
Peter's, beneath a very ugly tomb.

The next morning this epitaph was found inscribed upon the tomb:

"VENDIT ALEXANDER CLAVES, ALTARIA, CHRISTUM:
EMERAT ILLE PRIUS, VENDERE JUKE POTEST";

that is,

"Pope Alexander sold the Christ, the altars, and the keys:
But anyone who buys a thing may sell it if he please."

CHAPTER XV

From the effect produced at Rome by Alexander's death, one may imagine
what happened not only in the whole of Italy but also in the rest of the
world: for a moment Europe swayed, for the column which supported the
vault of the political edifice had given way, and the star with eyes of
flame and rays of blood, round which all things had revolved for the last
eleven years, was now extinguished, and for a moment the world, on a
sudden struck motionless, remained in