Her new marriage, we are especially told, in no wise made her neglectful of her duties towards her children, and especially that of constantly attending to their education, and superintending it in a great measure personally. She took infinite pains in seeking for the best masters, and in ascertaining for what career each of her sons was by nature most adapted. We learn further, without surprise, that she was a careful and prudent, rather than an indulgent mother; and find her acquiring the praise of contemporary writers by "never caressing her children," and never allowing them to come into her presence, save in full state costume, and requiring them to maintain a grave and decorous demeanor to match![125] For the rest, public affairs go on much the same as during the lifetime of Girolamo. The conspiracies are hatched and detected much as usual. That troublesome Ordelaffi knows no middle course between love and murder. As Catherine would not listen to him on the former topic, he is continually plotting to compass the latter. Now in Imola, now in Forlì, and now in some one of the outlying fortresses of the small state, some little conspiracy is continually being discovered and crushed by the lady's prudence and vigilance. A few traitors, found guilty of being in correspondence with the pretender, are hung, a few others banished,—and then things are quiet for a few months. As usual, the finance question is found to be the most difficult and abstruse part of the whole science of governing. The court of Forlì is maintained, we hear, on as magnificent a scale as that of many larger states. And money must be had. But Madama is a good manager; and strives much to find some means of making a full treasury not absolutely incompatible with a fair show of prosperity among the tax-payers; not, unhappily, with much success. Once Madama thought she had found the Aladdin's lamp at last. The great Via Emilia, high road from Milan, Bologna, Venice, and all Germany, to Rome, runs through our towns of Imola and Forlì. Suppose we put up, as we have a clear right to do, a turnpike-gate,—say two toll-bars,—one at either end of our territory, and so fleece travellers to the most needful replenishing of our own coffers, and every way desirable lightening of the burdens of our faithful subjects. How strange never to have thought of it before! [Sidenote: THE NEW TOLL-BARS.]