ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



confidential chamberlain, Serapica, records the payment 

 of wages to the labourers who planted lemon and mul- 

 berry trees in the garden at La Magliana. 1 Many were 

 the gay festivities that were held here, many the memor- 

 able interviews that took place in these halls. Here, 

 in the winter of 1515, the Pope gave one of his big 

 hunting parties in honour of Isabella d'Este, when fifty 

 stags and twenty wild boars were killed in one day. 

 Here in the following year Isabella's sister-in-law, the 

 noble Duchess Elisabetta, came to make a last effort on 

 behalf of her nephew Francesco Maria, and vainly im- 

 plored the Holy Father to avert the blow that was 

 about to fall on her beloved Urbino. It was at La 

 Magliana, in November 1521, that Leo the Tenth 

 received tidings of the rout of the French and the 

 capture of Milan, a piece of news which, he told 

 Castiglione, gave him as much pleasure as his election 

 to the Papacy. And here, that same evening, as he 

 watched the bonfires which the Swiss guards lighted in 

 honour of this joyful event, he caught the fatal chill 

 which ended his life in a few days. 



" On Sunday," wrote Castiglione to Mantua, " the 

 Pope received the news. The next Sunday he was 

 dead. Exactly a week ago he returned from La 

 Magliana with as much joy and triumph as when he 

 was first made Pope. The whole city came out to 



1 L. Pastor, History of the Popes> viii. 166. 

 82 



