Meanwhile some of the partisans of the Orsi had thrown the body of Girolamo from the window into the Piazza; and while the citizens were busied in displaying everywhere the papal flag, amid cries of "Chiesà! Chiesà!" the mob having torn every rag of clothing from the corpse, dragged it through the streets of the city, till certain friars took it from them, and placed it in the sacristy of their church. The Cardinal Savelli did not at all like the proposal made to him; and lost some important time, before, "being unwilling to have it said that the Church had lost a chance through his cowardice," he at last made up his mind to accept it. On arriving at Forlì, his first step was to visit Catherine in the Orsi Palace. An historical novelist would have little difficulty, and better historical warranty than often suffices for such purposes, in presenting his readers with a sufficiently striking and picturesque account of that interview. Catherine, the historians tell us, was, as we might expect from our knowledge of her, haughty, unbroken, and unbending; the Cardinal, as we might also expect from our knowledge of his kind, smooth-tongued, courteous, full of regrets and talk about his sacred duty to Holy Mother Church. This is all history tells us. But it is enough. The imagination has no difficulty in filling up the sketch. But at the conclusion of his courteous talking, the Cardinal intimated, that it would be better, that the Countess and her family should for the present find a safe shelter in a small but strong building over the St. Peter's gateway, under the care of trusty citizens, to be named by his Eminence. And Catherine was far from unwilling to acquiesce in the change. For though the accommodation proposed to her was materially of the most wretched, yet she naturally preferred any prison to the home of her husband's murderer; and the Cardinal's hint, that the gateway prison might be a safer asylum for her and her children than the palace of the Orsi, was, she felt, more than a mere pretext. That night, accordingly, the 15th of April, Catherine and her family were marched through the city, escorted by a troop of guards, bearing torches, from the Orsi palace to her new prison. The little procession of prisoners consisted of twelve persons; the Countess herself, her mother (who is now mentioned for the first time since her daughter's birth, and who may in all probability be supposed to have become Catherine's inmate at the time of her settling permanently in Forlì after the death of Sixtus), her sister Stella, her six children, a natural son of the Count, named Scipio, and two nurses. They were received with all courtesy by the three citizens to whose keeping the Cardinal had consigned them; but suffered much from the insufficiency of the small room to hold them. [Sidenote: BEFORE THE FORTRESS.]