ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



these new duties with his wonted ardour. " I am 

 well," he wrote on Christmas Eve to Venice. " This 

 air is milder than ours and suits me better. I am 

 about to be ordained, and shall learn to say Mass 

 to-morrow. You see how great a change God has 

 wrought in me." l 



But amid all the glamour of Rome and the manifold 

 interests of this new life, Bembo never forgot Villa 

 Bozza. Nothing gave him more pleasure than to 

 hear from the newly arrived Venetian Ambassador the 

 latest tidings of Torquato and Elena, and above all of 

 the garden. He insisted on hearing every detail of the 

 children's life, and charged Cola to provide the best 

 tutors for them both, saying that money spent on edu- 

 cation was always well spent. Unfortunately, Torquato 

 was an incorrigible idler, who hated the sight of a book, 

 while Elena displayed an independent spirit that tried 

 the patience of the nuns in whose convent she had 

 been placed. "I regret to hear," wrote her father, 

 " that you have become proud and obstinate, and refuse 

 to obey your teachers. This has vexed me greatly, 

 because girls of this kind grow up so disagreeable that 

 everyone dislikes them, most of all their husbands and 

 parents." Worse than all, Elena begged to be allowed to 

 learn to play the clavichord, a request which the Cardinal 

 sternly refused, saying that this was a vain and fri- 

 1 Letters, v. 225. 



160 



