So all that portion of the ancient building, which had been used for the personal accommodation of the Princess, was thrown down; and its materials contributed towards the erection of a new palace, at the extremity of the city, near to the fortress Ravaldino, and connected with it by one of the gateways of the town. The pleasures and splendour, which the tastes of the new age demanded, were thus admirably made compatible with the old time provision for security, which could by no means yet be dispensed with. For material was advancing more rapidly than moral civilisation. Outside the wall, in connection with the new palace, a large tract of land was purchased[135] for orchards, gardens, dairy pastures, "a great wood, in which were wild beasts of various kinds for the lord's diversion of hunting," and every kind of device, by which the inmates "might at all hours enjoy the pleasures of the country unobserved." The place was, "from its magnificence and beauty, named the Paradise;"[136] and in all the preparations for making her Paradise perfect, Catherine "left nothing unattempted, which could be a proof of greatness and of a royal mind." [Sidenote: THE COST OF PARADISE.] But there is a vile, ignoble difficulty, that ever dogs and hampers this sort of proof of a great and royal mind. Paradises are not produced in iron, brazen, or leaden ages, without abundant supply of cash. Royal minds have, accordingly, been ever exceedingly apt to show their quality by a remarkable fertility of expedient for the procuring of this base means for great aims. And Burriel details for us, with much admiration, the method hit upon by Catherine for paying for her new palace and park. There were, it seems, and for generations had been, certain taxes, to which lands in the territory of Forlì possessed by peasants were liable, and which were not paid by such as were in the hands of citizens. The unjust difference, it is to be remarked, does not appear to have been made between patrician and plebeian as such, but between countryman and townsman. The possessors of these unequally-taxed lands were, as might be supposed, an impoverished class, continually sinking towards utter destitution, and numbers of the peasant proprietors sold their land to prosperous citizens "for a bit of bread," says the historian, thus baulking the tax-gatherer and depopulating the country. As it was necessary to find a remedy for this growing evil, and as the simple one of equalising the tax was an idea far too opposed to the whole fabric of medieval political economy to enter for a moment even into the head of anyone, it was enacted, that no peasant should sell his land under heavy penalties, and forfeiture of the land by the buyer.