that of a simple Franciscan, the order to which he first belonged, and whose vow he had kept through half a century, by giving all he had for the good of others.  He lay on the ground in the plain dark robe and cowl, no unfit subject for a modern picture of little angels descending to shower lilies on a good man’s corpse.  The long files of armed men, the rich coaches, and liveried retinues of the princes, were little observed, in comparison with more than a hundred orphan girls whom his liberality had sustained, and who followed the bier in mourning robes and long white veils, spirit-like, in the dark night.  The trumpet’s wail, and soft, melancholy music from the bands, broke at times the roll of the muffled drum; the hymns of the Church were chanted, and volleys of musketry discharged, in honor of the departed; but much more musical was the whisper in which the crowd, as passed his mortal frame, told anecdotes of his good deeds.

I do not know when I have passed more consolatory moments than in the streets one evening during this pomp and picturesque show,—­for once not empty of all meaning as to the present time, recognizing that good which remains in the human being, ineradicable by all ill, and promises that our poor, injured nature shall rise, and bloom again, from present corruption to immortal purity.  If Don Carlo had been a thinker,—­a man of strong intellect,—­he might have devised means of using his money to more radical advantage than simply to give it in alms; he had only a kind human heart, but from that heart distilled a balm which made all men bless it, happy in finding cause to bless.

As in the moral little books with which our nurseries are entertained, followed another death in violent contrast.  One of those whom the new arrangements deprived of power and the means of unjust gain was the Cardinal Prince Massimo, a man a little younger than Don Carlo, but who had passed his forty years in a very different manner.  He remonstrated; the Pope was firm, and, at last, is said to have answered with sharp reproof for the past.  The Cardinal contained himself in the audience, but, going out, literally suffocated with the rage he had suppressed.  The bad blood his bad heart had been so long making rushed to his head, and he died on his return home.  Men laughed, and proposed that all the widows he had deprived of a maintenance should combine to follow his bier.  It was said boys hissed as that bier passed.  Now, a splendid suit of lace being for sale in a shop of the Corso, everybody says:  “Have you been to look at the lace of Cardinal Massimo, who died of rage, because he could no longer devour the public goods?” And this is the last echo of his requiem.