THE GARDENS OF PAPAL ROME 
meet him, and troops of children waving olive boughs 
in their hands. To-day there will be a very different 
kind of procession. ... So the glories of this world 
pass away and our Lord God shatters the plans of poor 
mortals as He sees fit.” 1 
After Leo the Tenth’s death La Magliana was prac¬ 
tically deserted by the Papal Court. To-day it is a 
farmhouse and the walls are crumbling to pieces. The 
ceilings are blackened with smoke, and the banquet- 
halls where cardinals and princes feasted have been 
turned into barns and stables. Lo Spagna’s frescoes 
were removed many years ago to the Louvre and the 
Capitol, and little remains to recall the time when these 
empty halls were crowded with a gay throng of cour- 
' tiers and servants, and the clatter of horses’ hoofs and 
the joyous sound of the horn rang through the court¬ 
yard. 
Popes and cardinals, princes and scholars, each had 
his country-house which he built and decorated after 
his fashion. But the grandest of all the villas that 
rose into being in the age of Leo was the pleasure- 
house which Raphael built on the slopes of Monte 
Mario for the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Giulio de’ 
Medici, afterwards Pope Clement the Seventh. Not 
only was Cardinal Giulio his uncle’s most influential 
counsellor, but popular report already marked him out 
1 Contin, Lettere Diplomatiche, p. 19. 
83 
