That Cosimo promoted a number of people of the lower order evinces equally his intention of weakening the opposition, as the cynical answer which he gave to those who remonstrated with him on the subject expresses his unmitigated selfishness. For when it was observed to him that he did not do well to ruin so many noble families, and that the town must suffer by the loss of many of her most excellent citizens, he answered that a few ells of fine scarlet cloth would fill Florence again with distinguished citizens. A ruined city, he said, was better than a lost one, and one could not rule a state with Paternosters. So he showed himself unmerciful to all who had once opposed him, and while such as left the places of exile (_confine_) assigned to them, were declared rebels and lost their property, those who observed the decree of banishment had their exile prolonged when the time of penalty had expired. Thus it was with Palla Strozzi. He had shown himself weak at the decisive moment of 1434, instead of supporting Rinaldo degli Albizzi. It did not save him; he was banished to Padua for ten years. When the ten years were over, he, who had only lived for science, kept himself within the prescribed limits, and never allowed any one to speak ill of Florence before him, hoped to see home again, but Cosimo condemned him to ten more years. It was very painful to him, for he was seventy-two years old, and loved Florence. He lived eighteen years longer in banishment, and his descendants never returned to his native city. His relations experienced the like hard fate with him. His daughter-in-law, Alessandra de Bardi[80] was, as a girl and young wife, a model of modesty and beauty: that did not save her. She saw her own father as well as her father-in-law go into exile, and die in exile. She saw her husband, Lorenzo, who could no longer bear the scorn, ill-treatment, and oppression to which the families of the exiles were exposed, and who went to Gubbio to earn his bread by teaching, die beneath a murderer’s hand. She saw one portion of her property vanish after the other, and her life pass away joylessly in constant change of residence, and constant anxiety for her children. Numerous families, once affluent, were reduced to misery; fathers and husbands wandered about in foreign lands, and their property was confiscated. Noble ladies begged alms. The poverty to which many were reduced by merciless party spirit, even more than by losses in war and bad harvests, incited the saintly Archbishop Antoninus in 1441 to found the charitable institution which still exists under the name of Buonuomini di San Martino, and which, managed by a society of trustworthy citizens, has for its object to soften misery, especially when undeserved and borne in silence.