; for on the left-hand side
of the face, a little below the socket of the eye, there is a mark in
the bone beneath the cheek which must have been made by the point of
the sword or dagger that inflicted the wound, and which shows that the
bravo Scoronconcolo's thrust must have been a shrewd one.

It will readily be supposed that the scene at the opening of the
sepulchre must have been a very impressive one. There, in that solemn
chapel of white and black marble which the genius of Michael Angelo
prepared for the repose of his sovereigns and patrons, with his
lifelike and immortal presentations of the forms of the dead who have
filled all story with their names, looking down on the deed with sad
and solemn faces, who would not, while thus forcing the prison-house
of the tomb to render up its terrible and long-concealed secrets, have
been deeply sensible of a feeling of awe and reverence? Even putting
aside all such sentiments as the contemplation of such a _memento
mori_ is usually found to inspire in most men, the purely scientific
historical inquirer must have felt the importance of the occasion, and
the great desirability of making the most in an historical point of
view of so rare an opportunity. I am sorry to be obliged to record
that the Florentines, so far as could be judged from their conduct and
bearing, felt nothing of all this. No one who knows them as well as I
do would have expected reverence from them under any possible or
imaginable circumstances; but one might have expected such due care
and decency of proceeding as would have sufficed to render the
examination of the remains as historically instructive as possible,
and to preserve the record for a future generation. But this was very
far from being the case. A learned professor of anatomy indeed
attended at the opening of the tomb, but instead of touching the
remains himself, or utilizing his science by handling them as they
ought to have been handled, he called a workman, and by him the bodies
were torn out from their resting-place in fragments. The clothes were
of course torn to pieces in the operation; the lace from the shirt of
Alexander was permitted to be stolen; and the same fate, as has been
stated, overtook his teeth. No sort of preparation had been made for
any possible examination of the remains to any good purpose. They were
laid out anyhow, as the phrase is, on a little marble bench in the
chapel. Those who remember the place will not need to