It has been mentioned that the unequal pressure of this land-tax had caused a vast amount of pauperism and destitution; and the presence of pestilence in Forlì and its territory both this year and the last, following in the wake of an army of foreign troops, as has so often happened, had terribly increased the evil. This and other oppressive taxes were, therefore, more necessary than ever, for Catherine (besides the cost of her improvements, so happily paid for out of nothing at all, as one may say,) was at great expenses for the alleviation of the increasing misery. She bought corn, she organised means of relief, she hired medical men from foreign parts, she founded confraternities for charitable purposes, but she repealed no taxes. How could she with such imperative calls on her for alms? Can it be that splendid princes find it more congenial to royal-minded tastes, and more convenient to royal-minded habits, to reign over alms-fed mendicants than over prosperous self-fed freemen? Then again, what says Mother Church? Is not almsgiving the broadest of all the roads to heaven? And how are the rich to, buy off their own sins in conformity with orthodox rule, if there are no beggars? But among all the cares and occupations arising out of the twofold business of advancing her own splendour and alleviating the misery of her subjects, Catherine found time to think of yet another matter of still greater importance than either of these. Madama was now meditating a third marriage, and this time she seems to have returned to the plan of marrying from policy and ambition. Probably the increasing storminess of the political horizon, and the consequent precariousness of the position of all the smaller princes of Italy, made her deem it desirable to seek the support which a connexion with some important and powerful family would afford her. In truth, it was the eve of a period, during which it was hardly to be expected that any unaided female hand, however virile in its energy, would be able to retain its grasp of a sceptre; and considering the matter in this point of view, she could not, probably, have chosen more prudently than she did. For the last year past, Giovanni de' Medici had been residing in Forlì as Ambassador from the Republic of Florence. He was great-grandson of that Giovanni who was the common ancestor of the two great branches of the family. That founder of the Medicean greatness had two sons, the elder of whom was Cosmo, "pater patriæ," from whom descended the elder branch, including among its scions Lorenzo the Magnificent, the two Popes Leo X. and Clement VII., and Catherine, the wife of Henry II. of France, and becoming extinct in the person of Alexander first Duke of Florence, murdered in 1537. Giovanni's second son, the younger brother of Cosmo, was Lorenzo, the grandfather of that Giovanni who now was the envoy in Forlì from the Republic of Florence. [Sidenote: GIOVANNI DE' MEDICI.]