So the new toll-bars are forthwith erected; but to the great surprise of Madama and her counsellors with very much less result than had been anticipated; with little other result indeed than a few broken heads and bloody noses, arising from the scuffles of the toll-bar keepers with violent travellers who decline paying the new imposition. This was all natural enough; but the strange thing is, that the traffic most notably falls off. Travellers won't come to be taxed. Ducky won't come to be killed. With a perverse cunning, most provoking, men go round another way; some stay at home and don't go at all; and the toll-bars barely pay the expense of their keepers. Then the Pesaro folk, whose communications with the neighbouring towns are much interrupted by the Lady Catherine's new toll-bars, take it into their heads to retaliate, by seizing every Forlì man who ventures to show his face within their jurisdiction, weighing him publicly on a steel yard by the road-side, and taxing him so much a pound, as if he were hogsflesh or mutton, to the great amusement and scoffing of the cities round about, and the infinite scandal and discomfiture of the men of Forlì. But Catherine was a wise princess, and in a very short time got a lesson in finance from her new scheme, which some other princes have failed to learn from the experience of centuries; and the unsuccessful toll-bars were quietly removed. Another somewhat curious matter, in which we find Madama engaged about this time, was the providing Forlì, both on her own behalf and that of her subjects, with one of the most necessary conveniences of civilised life, of which the city had been destitute since the riots at the time of the Count's death. The banks and pawnshops of two wealthy Jews had been then broken into and pillaged, and their owners frightened into abandoning the city. And now if a Christian had need of a little ready cash, where was he to look for it? Money absolutely needed, and not a Jew within hail! Madama felt that this was a state of things calling for immediate remedy. So special overtures were made to a wealthy Israelite of Bologna to come and settle in Forlì. The Jew admitted the urgent necessity of the case, but bearing in mind recent events, deemed it no more than common prudence to stipulate, that an instrument should be drawn up and executed in due legal form, by which the sovereign, state, and municipality, of Forlì, should be bound to indemnify him for any loss to his capital or property that might occur from revolution or other violence. This was promptly acceded to; the Jew was installed in Forlì, to the great joy of its ever-orthodox, but often out-at-elbows, Christian population; and, by Madama's wise provision, her lieges could once again get their little bills done as heretofore.