The Guelf supporters of the Della Torre now entered Milan, and were received with a great outburst of popular joy. A short period of anarchy followed, caused by the nobles, who had helped to drive out the Visconti, but had no desire to see the Della Torre in their place. After a few months, however, the sons of Napo succeeded by the favour of the lower classes, to whom their name was still dear, in restoring themselves to power, while in all the surrounding cities, whose fortunes were always bound up with Milan’s, their partisans drove out the Ghibellines and reinstated the Guelfs. Mosca, Guido, and Enrico della Torre now ruled the city, at first with a show of deference to the will of the Republic, but after a few years with a sovereignty fuller than that which the Visconti had enjoyed. The people were, in fact, accustoming themselves to a single rule. In 1307 Mosca died, and Guido assumed sole authority. Meanwhile the Visconti were dispersed in various directions. Galeazzo and his wife Beatrice had taken refuge with her kindred at Ferrara, and the other sons of Matteo had found places of safety where the powerful alliances of the family secured them from pursuit by the Della Torre. The shrewd chief himself, after vainly attempting to reverse the fortune of war, had withdrawn to a remote country villa on the Lake of Garda, and having apparently renounced all public activity, was passing his time in the innocent pastimes of fishing and thinking. But his keen eye watched every movement on the field of politics. He had spies and agents everywhere, and was but waiting the moment for a spring upon his foes. With cynical satisfaction he noted the inevitable course of the new tyranny in Milan; the jealousy and suspicion awaking within the city itself, and in the subjects and allied communities around at the growth of Guido’s despotism, the disloyalty of his near kindred and dependants, greedy for a share of power, and all the embarrassments of a chief in whom a noble and generous temper was not seconded by the sagacity and self-control which distinguished the observer himself. An oft-told story relates that Guido, at the height of his prosperity, sent a messenger to his fallen rival to ask him derisively how he fared, and when he hoped to see Milan again. Matteo was wandering beside the lake, discoursing with a companion. ‘You see how I live,’ he said to the envoy, ‘suiting myself to my fortunes. Tell your Lord that I am waiting till the sins of the Torriani have reached the measure of mine to return to my country.’ The expectation of the philosopher was justified as time went on, and Guido began to resort to cruel and oppressive means of preserving his power. In 1309 he imprisoned his cousin Cassone, Archbishop of Milan, and his nephews, the sons of Mosca, on suspicion of plotting against him, and was only withheld from further revenge by the protests of his own friends. The subsequent banishment of these kinsmen, who thenceforth