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This niche is now empty, and from a singular circumstance. About

one hundred and sixty years after the events we are now relating,

the head of the statue was changed, the sceptre taken from its

hand, and a dagger substituted in its place, and beneath it was

written Marcus Brutus. Thus inserted it remained perhaps a couple

of years, until one day, some persons, who had no sympathies with

Marcus Brutus, but rather an aversion to him, threw a rope around

the statue, pulled it down, and, reducing it to a shapeless mass,

dragged it, with many insulting gestures, beyond the walls of the

city. Who would have foretold this to Andrea Biffi when he

sculptured it?