He would not hear a word in their defence; and when Cardinal Farnese endeavored to procure a mitigation of their sentence, he brutally replied, 'If Paul III.

had shown the same justice, your father would not have been murdered and mutilated in the streets of Piacenza.' In open consistory, before the Cardinals and high officials of his realm, with tears streaming from his eyes, he exposed the evil life of his relatives, declared his abhorrence of them, and protested that he had dwelt in perfect ignorance of their crimes until that time.
This scene recalls a similar occasion, when Alexander VI.

bewailed himself aloud before his Cardinals after the murder of the Duke of Gandia by Cesare.

But Alexander's repentance was momentary; his grief was that of a father for Absalom; his indignation gave way to paternal weakness for the fratricide.

Paul, though his love for his relatives seems to have been fervent, never relaxed his first severity against them.