ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



they can manage the lives of others better than their 

 own. You need not be afraid that the charms of these 

 ladies will make me forget myself. For I am not as 

 great a fool as your Solomons would make out." l 



The issue proved him to have been right. From 

 Urbino he passed, after Duke Guidobaldo's death, to 

 Rome, and through the influence of his friend Giuliano 

 de Medici became secretary to Pope Leo X. But 

 wherever he was, at Ferrara with Duchess Lucrezia, or 

 at Urbino with Elisabetta Gonzaga and Emilia Pia, 

 young Bembo was never so happy as when he could 

 escape to the country for a few weeks. "I write to 

 your Highness," he says in a letter to Lucrezia from 

 Ercole Strozzi's villa, "sitting at an open window, 

 looking out on the sweet and fresh landscape and com- 

 mend myself to you as many times as there are leaves 

 in the garden." 2 In the Council hall at Venice, he 

 confesses that he sighed for a little shepherd's hut on 

 the Apennine slopes, whence he could look down on 

 the towers of Urbino; and the letters of his adored 

 Duchess came to him like a refreshing breeze from 

 those dear hills. This passionate delight in country 

 sights and sounds, in the song of the first nightingale 

 and the coming of the swallow, in the daily wonder of 

 sunrise and sunset, and the miracle of the spring, 



1 Lettere, ii. 17. The quotations from Bembo's Letters are taken 

 from the edition published at Verona in 1552. 



2 Ibid. iv. 1 1 6. 



136 



