CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 
joins, and which here is a swift and joyous river, and 
waters our meadows on the other side. In this fashion 
I mean to spend the whole summer and autumn, only 
going to Padua now and then for a few days to see my 
friends, and make my Villa seem the more charming 
compared with the city.” 1 
So the days slipped away, and by August, Bembo 
felt himself once more “a simple peasant of the soil.” 
With his own hands he not only picked strawberries 
and roses, but dug the ground and planted trees and 
shrubs. Papal Secretaries who paid him a visit were 
pressed into the service, and became as keenly interested 
in the garden as its owner. 
“ To-morrow,” wrote Bembo one October to Flavio 
Crisolino, “ I shall return home, to plant new trees in 
the little grove which has lost several oaks and chest¬ 
nuts, owing to the intense heat of the past summer. 
Your ivy has already covered a fine large pavilion at 
the other end of the garden, and I have made another 
little pergola with ivy and larch-poles firmly fixed in 
the ground at regular intervals, which in two or three 
years’ time ought to be very beautiful. So you see that 
your work has produced excellent results. I rejoice 
to hear that you often think of my Villetta and of the 
happy life we lead there, although I can hardly believe 
that your important affairs leave you time to think of 
my small fortunes. But I do not repent my choice, 
and am more content every day and, thank God, both 
well and merry.” 2 
1 Lettere, iii. 73. 2 Ibid., iii. 120. 
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