If he had wished to win their allegiance by this act of clemency Rienzi had ill-judged his enemies. They had disliked him before as a peasant upstart; now they hated him far more bitterly as a man who had been able to humble them in the public gaze, believing, whether rightly or wrongly, that it was not forgiveness but fear of the powerful families to which they belonged that had finally moved him to mercy. From this moment the Orsini, the Colonna, and their friends had but one object in life--to pull the Tribune from his throne. By bribery and the spreading of false rumours they set themselves to undermine his influence, telling tales everywhere of his extravagance and luxury as contrasted with the heavy taxes, until at last in 1354 a tumult broke out in the city, and a mob collected that stormed the palace where Rienzi lodged, shouting ‘Death to the Traitor!’ As the Tribune attempted to escape he was seen against the flames of his burning walls and cut down. [Sidenote: St. Catherine of Siena] With the fall of Rienzi died the idea of a restored and reformed Italy through the medium of a Holy Roman Republic, just as Dante’s hope of a new and more perfect Roman Empire had been shattered by the death of Henry VII. Was there then no hope for Italy in mediaeval minds? The next answer that there was hope, indeed, came from Siena, one of the hill towns not far south of Florence, and its author was a peasant girl, Catherine Benincasa, who, like Jeanne d’Arc, looking round upon the misery of her country, believed that she was called by God to show her fellow countrymen the way of salvation. St. Catherine, for she was afterwards canonized, was one of the twenty-five children of a Sienese dyer, who was at first very angry that his daughter refused to marry and instead joined the Order of Dominican Tertiaries--that is, of women who, still remaining in their own homes, bound themselves by vows to obey a religious rule. In time, not only the dyer but all Siena came to realize that Catherine possessed a mind and spirit far above ordinary standards, so that, while in her simplicity she would accept the meanest household tasks, she had yet so great an understanding of the larger issues of life that she could read the cause of each man or woman’s trouble who came to her, and suggest the remedy they needed to give them fresh courage or hope. During an outbreak of plague in Siena it was Catherine who, undismayed and tireless, went everywhere amongst the sick and dying, infusing new heart into the weary doctors and energy into patients succumbing helplessly to the disease.