CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 



and crowned by celestial spirits with a diadem of light. 

 But henceforth his visits to the Villa were few and far 

 between. Morosina and her children still spent the 

 summer there, and Bembo joined them whenever he 

 could snatch a few days from his official duties. "To-day 

 I am at the Villa, and seem to be alive again," he wrote 

 one August to Gian Matteo at Venice. " Here it is 

 fresh and beautiful, and altogether delightful. I mean 

 to stay here for a few days, and wish that you could 

 leave your desk and come here with your boy Luigi." 



But all too soon, sorrows came to darken this happy 

 home. Bembo's promising boy, Lucilio, died there one 

 summer day in 1532, after a few hours' illness. "I 

 have lost my Lucilio," the stricken father wrote to his 

 old friend Avila, " my sweet and charming boy, on 

 whom, as you know, all the hopes of my house were 

 set. I cannot tell you what grief this unexpected 

 event has caused me. ... So in one moment all 

 our hopes and dreams are shattered." And in answer 

 to Veronica Gambara's letter of sympathy he wrote : 

 " Certainly I have lost a little son, who more than 

 fulfilled every hope I had formed of his future 

 although he was not yet nine years of age. But I try 

 not to murmur at the Will of God, and since my 

 flower was doomed to die so soon, at least I thank 

 Heaven that he was all I could most desire." l 



1 Lettere, iii. 212, iv. 27. 

 157 



