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 
