The Orsi and their associates felt that the city was rapidly becoming too hot to hold them. That night, in hurried council, they determined on leaving Forlì secretly, before morning. But there was one thing,—and the incident is strikingly illustrative of the character of the country and the epoch, and of the undying ferocity of Italian party hatred,—one thing to be done, even before providing for their personal safety, fearfully endangered as it was by every hour of delay. They determined that Catherine, on coming forth triumphant from her fortress, should find herself childless; and feel, in the moment of consummating her success, that it was worthless to her. The six children were still at the gate-house in the care of the three citizens to whom Savelli had entrusted them. In the early part of the night, therefore, Checco d'Orso, Ronchi, and Pansecchi presented themselves at the prison, with a fictitious order from Savelli that the children should be given up to them to be conducted to a place of safety out of the city. Fortunately for the little ones, Capoferri conceived suspicions of the truth of the representations made to him, and steadily refused to give up the children, despite the urgent persuasions and threats of Orsi. The cautious triumvirate of the gate-house had declined to admit within their walls more than him alone of the party at the door. Checco, therefore, on finding himself thus baffled, made a sign from a window to his comrades outside to force an entrance at the moment of his passing out. Ronchi, seizing an axe, approached the door for this purpose. But a sentinel on the wall above, observing this hostile movement, fired down upon him and a servant, who was with him, and killed the latter. Ronchi retired from the wall, and at the same moment Orsi came out, and the gate was safely shut behind him. There remained nothing for the baulked desperadoes but to hurry, with rage and despair in their hearts, to join the small body of relatives and adherents, who had prepared to quit the city with them. They went out, a party of seventeen, at two o'clock in the morning of the 30th of April: and thus the revolution was at an end. [Sidenote: HER ABLE CONDUCT.] According to all medieval law, right, and custom, Forlì deserved to be sacked in punishment for its rebellion; and it was not altogether easy for Catherine to save it from the horrors of such a fate. For it might be difficult to get rid of the troops who had come to her aid, if they were baulked of their anticipated prey. The Countess announced to the citizens that if she spared them this merited chastisement, she did so solely for the sake of the women of Forlì; for the men had not deserved mercy from her: and eventually, by prudence and caution, and permitting only a very few of the soldiers to enter the walls, Forlì was saved from sack.