CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 



else to interfere with them. Perhaps a still greater 

 mark of confidence was the fact that he left Cola 

 all his writings in prose or verse to be published or 

 not, at his discretion. 



Nor was Bembo unmindful of the peasants who 

 lived on his small estate his little family, as he calls 

 them in his letters. He took a fatherly interest in 

 their concerns, protected them from the injustice of 

 rapacious officials, nursed them when they were sick, 

 and wept for them when they died. Many were the 

 appeals which he addressed to the Podesta of Cittadella 

 on behalf of these innocent contadini, whose wrongs he 

 regarded as injuries to himself. One day he insisted 

 on the release of a poor lad who had been arrested 

 for bearing a sword, as if, in those troubled times, a 

 weapon were not needed for self-defence. Another 

 time he demanded the restoration of an old servant's 

 effects, which a kinsman in Ferrara had detained un- 

 justly. " I beg you," he wrote to Duke Alfonso's 

 secretary, " send for the scoundrel and give him a 

 good scolding, which he richly deserves. And if you 

 can recover these things, which are worth little in 

 themselves, but are precious to our poor old Anna, 

 I shall be as much obliged as if they were Countess 

 Matilda's dowry." l When, on the Feast of the Virgin, 

 a dance was given at the Villa, Bembo would write to 



1 Lettere, iii. 115. 



H3 



