Among the grave and reverend seniors industriously busy at Trent, in the year 1552, at their great work of constructing a dam to stop the course of a perennial river, may be observed one Peter Tagliavia, Archbishop of Palermo, a silver–haired and right reverend old man, very prudent, wise, and sagacious, we are told, in the management of affairs of all[2] sorts. There he is sagaciously dragging forward his bit of stick to contribute to the formation of the great dam, undismayed by the swift running of the stream the while. He is much puzzled by the consideration of the manner and style in which it will be proper for the assembled Fathers of the Church to communicate with heretics. For it is quite clear, on the one hand, that _being_ heretics and excommunicate, and damned already accordingly, all propriety and Church etiquette would require that they should be treated and addressed as such. But, on the other hand, there is reason to believe that their arrogance will reach the height of expecting to be treated like Christians, and that failing such treatment, no reply will be got from them at all, and so all proceedings be stopped _in limine_.[3] Very perplexing!
The sagacious Archbishop insisted much on this point, dragging up his bit of drift wood to the dam with pertinacious industry. He was made a cardinal in the following year for this and other merits; partly also, because he had royal blood in his veins,—writing himself "Tagliavia d'Aragona." He died five years later, in 1558, still busy in damming that terrible river, which was already changing the face of things around him. Even Rome itself was very unlike what he had remembered it in the good old times, some fifty years ago or thereabouts. Ah! Rome was worth living in and living for in those days! Happy days! when, as His Eminence of Bibbiena used to say, we wanted nothing but a court with ladies. Court, with ladies, quotha!
And with that our Archbishop's musings on the brave old days, when the second Julius was Pope, and no heretical turbulence had yet disturbed the sacerdotal empyrean, could hardly fail to recall a tolerably brilliant galaxy of such ladies, as were especially attracted from all parts of Italy, to a court whose numerous and wealthy courtiers were all professionally and permanently bachelors.