CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 
when he in his turn lost his wife a few months later. 
“ On returning last night from Praglia, where I had 
ridden for exercise and change of scene, I found the 
sad news of the death of your dear wife, Madonna 
Franceschina, awaiting me. I feel for you as a fond 
brother, who knows by experience how hard these part¬ 
ings are to bear. For when we are already old and 
want these sweet and faithful companions more than 
ever, it is a bitter and cruel thing to be deprived of 
them.” 1 
The two children whom Morosina had left him 
were henceforth the object of Bembo’s tenderest care 
—the boy Torquato and the little Elena, who grew up 
so like her mother that the sight of her lovely face 
often brought tears to his eyes. They still spent the 
summer at the Villa, in Cola’s charge, and when, in 
1539, Bembo received the long-coveted Cardinal’s 
hat from Paul III, he came there to spend his last 
few days with them. The sight of these familiar 
places recalled the past vividly ; he wrote his beautiful 
elegy on the death of Morosina and sent it to his 
intimate friend Elisabetta Quirini at Venice, begging 
her to let no one see the verses, or hear that they had been 
composed after his election. Then the new Cardinal 
went on to Rome, and in spite of the load of seventy 
years that weighed heavily on his shoulders, took up 
1 Lettere, ii. 103. 
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