rd on the ramparts]
some of the cardinals who were in the castle used to come up to see
me, and most of all cardinal Ravenna and cardinal de' Gaddi, to whom I
often said that I wished they would not come any more, because their
red caps could be seen a long way off, and made it mighty dangerous
for both them and me from those palaces which were near by, like the
Torre de' Bini; so that, finally, I shut them out altogether, and
gained thereby their ill-will quite decidedly. Signor Orazio Baglioni,
who was my very good friend, also used to come and chat with me. While
he was talking with me one day, he noticed a kind of a demonstration
in a certain tavern, which was outside the Porta di Castello, at a
place called Baccanello. This tavern had for a sign a red sun, painted
between two windows. The windows being closed, Signor Orazio guessed
that just behind the sun between them, there was a company of soldiers
having a good time. So he said to me, 'Benvenuto, if you had a mind to
fire your cannon near that sun, I believe you would do a good piece of
work, because there is a good deal of noise there, and they must be
men of importance.' I replied to the gentleman, 'It is enough for me
to see that sun to be able to fire into the middle of it; but if I do,
the noise of the gun and the shock it will make will knock over that
barrel of stones which is standing near its mouth.' To which the
gentleman answered, 'Don't wait to talk about it, Benvenuto, for, in
the first place, in the way in which the barrel is standing, the shock
of the cannon could not knock it over; but even if it did, and the
Pope himself were under it, it would not be as bad as you think; so
shoot, shoot!' So I, thinking no more about it, fired right into the
middle of the sun, exactly as I had promised I would. The barrel fell,
just as I said, and struck the ground between cardinal Farnese and
messer Jacopo Salviati. It would have crushed both of them had it not
happened that they were quarrelling, because the cardinal had just
accused messer Jacopo of being the cause of the sacking of Rome, and
had separated to give more room to the insults they were flinging at
each other."[120] The cardinal never forgot his narrow escape.

From the point of view of archaeological interests Paul III. will
always be remembered as long as the Museo Nazionale of Naples and the
Baths of Caracalla of Rome continue to hold the admiration of
students. In reading the account of his