In the following March, it was decided that the government of the city should be equally divided among three Monti; the Monte de' Nove; the Monte del Popolo; the Monte of the Gentiluomini and Dodicini; and that those of the Riformatori who were admitted should be distributed among these three Monti. A number of exiles were recalled. Then the Signoria with all the Council went to the Duomo, to return thanks to God and to the Virgin Mary, the _Te Deum Laudamus_ was sung, the bells rang _a gloria_, and they returned to the Palace. But the real authority was still vested in the Balìa. A special magistracy called the _Consiglio dei tre segreti_ had been instituted in 1492, the three being chosen from the members of the Balìa, and wielding, up to a certain point, the authority of the Balìa. By means of this special Council--suppressed at intervals by the enemies of the Noveschi, but almost always soon re-established--the Monte de' Nove swayed the State. The government was rapidly becoming an oligarchy, in the hands of certain families of Noveschi. Writing of the factions of Siena, Machiavelli calls the Noveschi the "nobili." They were in fact a kind of burgher nobility, risen out of families of merchants in the course of the previous century. We find their parallel in Florentine history in the _ottimati_, the _nobili popolani_, whose prepotency had been overthrown by the Medici more than half a century before. They were men of wealth and influence, munificent patrons of art and letters; several of them must rank among the most enlightened men of their day. Prominent among them, the heart and soul of the new regime, are the Petrucci, Salvetti, Borghesi, Bichi and Bellanti. The more violent spirits are Giacoppo and Pandolfo Petrucci, Luzio and Leonardo Bellanti; but the noblest is Niccolò di Bartolommeo Borghesi, an ardent patriot and a profound scholar, whom Professor Zdekauer regards as the most important personality in the story of Siena during the second half of the Quattrocento. Niccolò had taken a leading part in the return of the _fuorusciti_ in 1487, and in the September of that year he was appointed professor for five years at the Studio to read "Opus Humanitatis ac moralem Phylosophiam," and at the same time made Secretary of State "with the charge of writing the annals and the deeds of the Sienese from the foundation of the City itself."[52] But he showed more desire to make history than to write it, married his daughter Aurelia to Pandolfo Petrucci and plunged into the turmoil of the political conflict.