.
So the great monastery was saved from fire and the monks from death. But
the Pope was not yet dead, and while he lived the people were restless
and angry by day and night, and ready for new deeds of violence; but
Marcantonio Colonna rode through the city continually, entreating them
to wait patiently for the end, and because he also had suffered much at
Paul's hands, they listened to him and did nothing more.

[Illustration: PIAZZA MINERVA]

The rest is a history which all men know: how the next Pope was just,
and put the Carafa to their trial for many deeds of bloodshed; how the
judgment was long delayed that it might be without flaw; how it took
eight hours at last to read the judges' summing up; and how Cardinal
Carafa was strangled by night in Sant' Angelo, while at the same hour
his brother and the two who had murdered his wife were beheaded in Tor
di Nona, just opposite the Castle, across the Tiber--a grim tragedy, but
the tragedy of justice.

Southward a few steps from the Church of the Minerva is the little
Piazza della Pigna, with a street of the same name leading out of it.
And at the corner of the place is a small church, dedicated to 'Saint
John of the Pine-cone,' that is, of the Region. Within lies one of the
noble Porcari in a curious tomb, and their stronghold was close by,
perhaps built in one block with the church itself.

The name Porcari calls up another tale of devotion, of betrayal, and of
death, with the last struggle for a Roman Republic at the end of the
Middle Age. It was a hopeless attempt, made by a brave man of simple and
true heart, a man better and nobler than Rienzi in every way, but who
judged the times ill and gave his soul and body for the dream of a
liberty which already existed in another shape, but which for its name's
sake he would not acknowledge. Stephen Porcari failed where Rienzi
partially succeeded, because the people were not with him; they were no
longer oppressed, and they desired no liberator; they had freedom in
fact and they cared nothing for the name of liberty; they had a ruler
with whom they were well pleased, and they did not long for one of whom
they knew nothing. But Stephen, brave, pure and devoted, was a man of
dreams, and he died for them, as many others have died for the name of
Rome and the phantom of an impossible Republic; for Rome has many times
been fatal to those who loved her best.

In the year 1447 Pope Eugenius the Fourth died, after a long and j