Note 659 — WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22.
Reading edition
On the day of his coronation he was asked to pardon four young men who had broken the law against carrying arms. 'So long as I live,' he replied, 'every criminal must die.' 'He was inexorable in individual cases; he adhered to his laws with a rigour that amounted to cruelty, while in the framing of general rules we find him mild, yielding, and placable.' Ranke's Popes, ed. 1866, i. 307, 311.