Pasquin appeared with a plate of toothpicks, and to the
question of Marforio, what he was doing with them, he replied, "I am
taking them to Alexandrino, Medicis, and Rusticucci," the three
cardinals who had been most active in securing the Papacy for the new
Pope. The point of the joke was plain to the Romans: it meant that his
adherents, instead of gaining anything by their efforts, had been
deceived, and would have nothing to do now but to pick their teeth at
leisure.

Leti, in his entertaining and gossipping life of this most merciless
of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the
temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty
shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen,
replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman
a princess,--meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had
formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and
a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his
Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but
to no purpose. Upon which he stuck up printed papers in all the public
places of the city, promising, upon the word of a Pope, to give the
author of the pasquinade a thousand pistoles and his life, provided he
would discover himself, but threatened to hang him, if he was found
out by any one else, and offered the thousand pistoles to the
informer." Upon this the author was simple enough to make confession
and to demand the money. Sixtus paid him the sum, and then, saying
that he had indeed promised him his life, but not freedom from
punishment, ordered his hands to be cut off, and his tongue to be
bored, "to prevent him from being so witty for the future." This act,
says Leti, "filled every one with terror and amazement." And well
might such a piece of Oriental barbarity excite the horror of the
Romans.[11] Pasquin, however, was not alarmed, and a few days
afterward he appeared holding a wet shirt to dry in the sun. It was a
Sunday morning, and Marforio, naturally surprised at such a violation
of the day, asked him why he could not wait till Monday before drying
it Pasquin answered, that there was no time to lose; for, if he waited
till to-morrow to dry his shirt, he might have to pay for the
sunshine;--hinting at the heavy taxes which Sixtus had laid upon the
necessaries of life, and from which the sunshine itself might not long
be exe