to all, but chiefly to us.--May it, therefore, please the blessed God so to inspire you, that these our exhortations and commands may be executed so as to bring about the best results, and may He preserve you. From Pesaro, 7th June, 1598. "FRANCESCO MARIA." The consequence of this singular appeal was a unanimous and urgent resolution in favour of the Duke's immediate marriage; indeed nothing else could well be looked for, the alternative contemplated by the people being loss of their independence, and the substitution of a foreign legate, changed every few years, for a hereditary and popular sovereign. Passeri conjectures that this result was in fact less distasteful to Francesco Maria than the tone of his letter might infer; and that the whole expedient was adopted in order to obtain a satisfactory answer to the importunities of the Pontiff, whom the stern measures lately adopted towards Ferrara had rendered the Duke peculiarly averse to thwart, by opposition to his scheme. From the Memoirs so often quoted, we learn nothing beyond the obvious facts, that the marriage was undertaken in compliance with urgent entreaties of the Duchess mother and of the people of Urbino, and that the bride was his own choice. Of Cardinal Giulio della Rovere's two natural sons we have already spoken.[89] In the correspondence of Francesco Maria, there occur some proofs of a bad understanding between him and these cousins, the origin and circumstances of which it is unnecessary to examine. To Ippolito Marquis of S. Lorenzo, there was born in 1585, of his marriage with Isabella Vitelli, Princess dell'Amatrice in the Abruzzi, a daughter Livia, who was educated in the convent of Sta. Caterina at Pesaro; and on her fell the choice of Francesco Maria, as announced in the following extract of a letter to the Archduchess Maria of Austria. A selection so obviously ineligible may have been dictated in part by that shrinking from close contact with strangers which his reserved habits were calculated to generate, and partly too by the sad experience he had already reaped of a marriage of state policy. [Footnote 89: Above, p. 82.] "Moved by the unremitting entreaties of my subjects, I have been forced to establish myself by a new alliance: yet as my age and other considerations would have prevented me from taking this resolution but for their satisfaction, I have chosen to combine with their wishes a due consideration for my own, by selecting one of my proper blood, and brought up in this country, in whom are combined many of the qualities suited to my views."