This he immediately did, starting for Rome with Catherine on the 14th of October. And ten days afterwards, the good people of Forlì received the necessary lesson from the sight of four corpses dangling from as many windows of the _Palazzo Pubblico_. The second residence in Rome, which followed this return in October, 1481, was characterised by events of a very different kind from those which had imparted so festive a character to those first four years. In the early days of his Papacy, the efforts of Sixtus to turn his elevation to account in the only manner in which it was valuable to him, had been crowned with success by the establishment of his son—or nephew—as prince of the third-rate states of Forlì and Imola. The bolder attempt, which followed, to acquire for him the dominion of Florence at the expense of so much black and odious guilt had, as has been seen, not only failed, but had entailed on Italy two years of war. And now the same undying ambition and insatiable avarice was driving him into the still greater misfortunes, which resulted from his endeavours to appropriate the dukedom of Ferrara. [Sidenote: ITALIAN POLITICS IN 1481.] Though much discontented with Girolamo's failure in the object of his visit to Venice, in as much as the Signory, while giving him abundance of fair words, had steadily evaded any engagement as to relinquishing their pretentions to Ferrara, when its Duke should be driven out by their joint forces, Sixtus, nevertheless, determined on continuing his alliance with them, in the hope that, when the prey was hunted down, he might find the means of appropriating it to himself. The Venetian Senators were doubtless guided in their secret counsels by similar considerations. Every effort was at first made at Rome to conceal the existence of such an understanding; and the Pope was in public loud in his abuse of the Republic. But Ferdinand, the crafty and cautious old King of Naples, was not to be taken in by any such means. And the first consequence of the Pope's policy was the necessity of sending troops with Girolamo at their head to the Neapolitan frontier to oppose the hostile movements of the Neapolitans, who, under the command of Alfonzo, the King's son, threatened to force their way through the Roman states, for the purpose of going to the assistance of the Duke of Ferrara. Most of the other states of Italy, as usual, joined in the quarrel; the greater potentates for the protection of their own, or the hope of acquiring new dominions; and the lesser, as usual, in the capacity of mercenaries and "condottieri" captains. Thus all Italy was in a state of war and confusion.