Those who were able, protected themselves best by contempt
both of the false and true accusations, and by brilliant and joyous
display. More sensitive natures sank into utter despair when they found
themselves deeply involved in guilt, and still more deeply in slander.
In course of time calumny became universal, and the strictest virtue
was most certain of all to challenge the attacks of malice. Of the
great pulpit orator, Fra Egidio of Viterbo, whom Leo made a cardinal on
account of his merits, and who showed himself a man of the people and a
brave monk in the calamity of 1527, Giovio gives us to understand that
he preserved his ascetic pallor by the smoke of wet straw and other
means of the same kind. Giovio is a genuine Curial in these matters. He
generally begins by telling his story, then adds that he does not
believe it, and then hints at the end that perhaps after all there may
be something in it. But the true scapegoat of Roman scorn was the pious
and moral Adrian VI. A general agreement seemed to be made to take him
only on the comic side. He fell out from the first with the formidable
Francesco Berni, threatening to have thrown into the Tiber not, as
people said, the statue of Pasquino, but the writers of the satires
themselves. The vengeance for this was the famous 'Capitolo' against
Pope Adriano, inspired not exactly by hatred, but by contempt for the
comical Dutch barbarian; the more savage menaces were reserved for the
cardinals who had elected him.
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