But the most marked alteration of his character was his growing aversion to public business, and increasing proneness to gratify his secluded and selfish habits by devoting an undue portion of time to his private relaxations of study and books. The tendency to solitude which had been gradually stealing upon him was checked for a season after the birth of his son. This joyous occasion seems to have in some degree revived the elasticity of his youthful feelings: his visits to Pesaro were more frequent, and, in 1606, the Comedy of _L'Ingannata_ was repeatedly performed in the palace there. Ere long, however, his mind gradually relapsed into a sort of morbid abstraction which was constitutional to him, and the retirement of Castel Durante became more and more attractive. It would indeed have been difficult to find a spot more congenial. Known originally as Castel del Ripa, a title appropriate to its position on a peninsula, formed by the rugged ravine of the brawling Metauro, it had been destroyed about 1277, in a foray of the people of Urbino, whence it is distant about nine miles. Pope Martin IV. ordered it to be rebuilt by his Legate in Romagna, Guglielmo Durante, a noted canonist, who gave it his own name. Having subsequently passed in seigneury to the Brancaleoni of Mercatello, it was obtained, under the title partly of conquest, partly of inheritance, by the Counts of Montefeltro, in 1429. After that dynasty had been extinguished, it owed to papal munificence a second re-edification in 1636, when Urban VIII. raised it to the rank of a city, suffragan to the Bishop of S. Angelo in Vado; and the improvements he made upon it are commemorated by his statue erected in the town, and by another change to its present name of Urbania.