In this magnificent home on the banks of the Tiber, Catherine spent four happy, prosperous, and brilliant years;—probably the most happy, the most prosperous, and the most brilliant of her career. Never, perhaps, since the old times of a Marozia and a Theodora, whose boundless and shameless power in the eternal city had given rise to the fable of a female Pope, had a woman occupied a position of so much power and pre-eminence in Rome. She very shortly became an all-powerful favourite with her uncle (or father-in-law) Sixtus. All Rome was absolutely at her feet. Courtiers in search of favour, litigants in search of justice—(or injustice)—officials in search of promotion, brought their petitions and applications to her. The most important employments were often given according to the recommendations of this girl in her teens, as Burriel[76] assures us, without manifesting the shadow of an idea, that there was anything objectionable in such a mode of administering the Papal power. At this period of her life, writes another[77] chronicler, she was so great a favourite with the Pope, that most of the princes of Italy, who had any request to make of the Apostolic see, availed themselves of the intercession of Catherine for the attainment of their desires. Though apparently totally unaware, that all this was in any way otherwise than it should have been, the old writers tell us much of Catherine's prudence, discretion and moderation in wielding and managing the great power so strangely entrusted to such hands. We have no recorded facts adducible in direct proof of the justice of this high praise. But we may find some evidence in support of it from the observation of our heroine under adversity; for which some later portions of her career will afford abundant opportunity. Assuredly there must have been materials of high and noble quality in a nature not wholly corrupted and spoiled by such an education and such environment in childhood and in youth, as that which fell to the lot of this young princess. [Sidenote: THE ORDELAFFI.] Dark days were not far distant; but all as yet in her life had been rose-colour:—or purple-tinted rather; for the more modest hue seems hardly gorgeous enough to typify the blaze of prosperous sunshine which had hitherto illumined her path. And now, during these years at Rome, though they had been sufficiently marked already as the minions of fortune, the star of the young couple was still ever rising. On the 15th of December of the year in which Catherine arrived in Rome, her husband was with much ceremony and speechifying made a citizen of the eternal city.[78]