Giacomo, we are told, accepted his preferment with well-acted modesty and surprise, and Tommaso appears to have become easily reconciled to the arrangement, as he is not long after found back again in Forlì, in the service of the Countess. These events took place in the summer of 1490; and there is reason[124] to suppose that the new _Castellano_ had then been his liege lady's husband for several months. The marriage, though a perfectly legitimate one in the eyes of the Church, was, and remained a rigidly guarded secret; not only because it was a wholly unavowable mesalliance, but because according the public law of the Holy Roman Empire, Catherine's second marriage would have entailed deprivation of the guardianship of her children. It was, as may be supposed, by no means a prudent thing even to allude to a secret of such importance. A poor ignorant artisan, who had been overheard saying, that somebody had told him, that somebody else had said that their lady had married her _Castellano_, was forthwith summoned to the presence of the Countess, who, after a few words spoken with a severity which half frightened him out of his senses, ordered him at once to be put on the rack: from which torture, says the historian, he barely escaped with his life. We may be very sure, that few words were ever whispered even in Forlì on so dangerous a subject. And the reverend biographer, who relates the above incident, seems as if he hardly felt safe two hundred years afterwards in meddling with such state secrets, remarking apologetically, that he merely notifies the fact, that his readers may not think any ill when they at a later period meet with mention of a son of Catherine's named Giacomo, born somewhere about this time. [Sidenote: A FORTUNATE YOUTH.] In truth, the Forlì public had little cause to pay any attention to this portion of the private life of their sovereign. For in all respects as far as regarded them, and as far as the world could see, Catherine was still sovereign Countess, and Giacomo Feo still _Castellano_ of Ravaldino, and nothing more. All that could be done for her young husband without lifting him from the rank of a subject, Catherine delighted in accomplishing. Thus, we find her obtaining for him from her brother at Milan some order of chivalry, all the insignia of which were duly sent by the hands of proper heraldic personages from that splendid court. The noblest knights of the most conspicuous families in Forlì invested the young man, one with cloak, another with collar, and another with spurs; and there were grand festivities, and Catherine was, it is written, in the highest spirits.