The step was by no means a stronger one than the necessities of the case required. When Girolamo returned to Rome on the 14th, he found his home a ruin. The state of Rome was like that of a city given up to pillage. The streets were filled with citizens carrying property of all sorts hither and thither, in the endeavour to find some comparatively safe place of stowage for it. Those who had just sacked the houses of others were as much at a loss to preserve their plunder as the more legitimate owners were to save their property. All who were in any wise connected with the Riarii were of course more especially exposed to danger. The large magazines belonging to a certain Giovanni Battista Pallavicini, a brother-in-law of Count Girolamo, which had for several years escaped, by fraudulent connivance, from all visits of the tax-gatherer, were utterly gutted. The mob found in them, we are specially told,[111] all the wax intended for the obsequies of the Pontiff, a large quantity of alum, and much quicksilver. The Genoese merchants, of whom there were many at Rome, were particularly obnoxious to the mob, as countrymen of the deceased Pope. But little property of value was found in the Count's palace. We have seen it all prudently packed off in time to Forlì. But the mob revenged themselves for their disappointment by almost destroying the house itself. Marble doorways and window-cases were wrenched from the walls, and carried off. What could not be removed was destroyed. The green-houses, and even the trees in the gardens, were utterly devastated. One mob rushed out of the city to a farm belonging to the Count in the neighbourhood, and there made booty of a hundred cows, as many goats, and a great number of pigs, asses, geese, and poultry, which belonged, says Infessura, to the Countess. Other indications of our heroine's good house-keeping were found in enormous stores of salt meat, round Parma cheeses, and very large quantities of Greek wine. The huge granaries, also, from which Sixtus had derived so unrighteous a gain, fell, of course, an easy prey to the plunderers. [Sidenote: LEAVES ROME.] By the 22nd of August the Sacred College had succeeded in some degree in restoring Rome to a condition of not more than usual disorder. On that day Girolamo formally undertook to give up into the hands of the Cardinals, the castle and all the fortresses of the Church—but not till they had consented to discharge his little bill of 4000 ducats for arrears of pay as General of the forces.