Besides, the abortive attempts to increase his possessions, which had formed the leading object of his life for the last eight years, had most materially contributed to increase the difficulties of holding what he _had_ acquired under his present changed circumstances. Lorenzo de' Medici, at Florence, whom he had failed to assassinate, Hercules d'Este, at Ferrara, whom he had failed to drive from his dukedom by force, and the Venetians whom Sixtus had suddenly jilted the year before to ally himself with their enemies, and had then excommunicated, were none of them likely to be very cordial or safe neighbours, and were not unlikely to lend a favourable ear, and, under the rose, a helping hand to those persevering Ordelaffi youths, who were always in search of some such means of recovering the heritage of their ancestors. Thus the four years following the death of Sixtus were little else for Girolamo and Catherine, than a period of continually increasing difficulty and struggle. To the sources of trouble indicated above Girolamo soon added by his imprudence another, which in the sequel led to consequences still more fatal. At the time of the Pope's death he had, as may easily be imagined from some little indications we have had of his theory and practice of administration of the Papal affairs, a very considerable sum of ready money in his hands. But for the last thirteen years of his life his command of resources had been practically almost unlimited; and he was wholly unused to the necessity of abstaining from what he wished on account of considerations of cost. He was a man of magnificent and expensive tastes; and like his apostolic kinsman, had especially that, most fatal to the pocket, of building. At the same time, the extremely distressed state of the people of his principalities at the period of his second arrival among them from Rome, arising from the war and the consequently neglected state of industry and agriculture, made it absolutely necessary to do something for their relief. Girolamo remitted the tax on meat; and at the same time launched out into great and costly building enterprises.