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.” 1 
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 Lettere, v. 225. 
l6o 
