In 1505 Bembo repaired to Urbino, and sojourned chiefly at that court during the next six years, where his varied attainments were highly prized, and where his philological pedantry was probably regarded as ornamental. Besides enjoying the converse of many congenial spirits, he there formed a friendship with Giuliano de' Medici, to which he owed many subsequent honours. Accompanying him to Rome in 1512, he was recommended by him to his brother, the Cardinal, whose first act on being chosen Pope in the following year, was to name Bembo his secretary, jointly with his friend Sadoleto. For this situation he was in many respects well fitted, by the happy union of great learning with an extensive knowledge of men and manners, which his residence at Ferrara and Urbino had not failed to impart. The laxity of his morals, and the paganism of his ideas, were unfortunately no disqualifications under Leo X. He continued to earn his master's confidence in the discharge of his regular duties, as well as in occasional diplomatic missions, but, as Roscoe truly observes, his success as a negotiator did not equal his ability in official correspondence. The pensions and benefices which rewarded his services enriched him for life, and even before that Pontiff's death he sought at Padua an elegant literary retirement, refusing from Clement VII., and from the Signory of Venice, all offers of public employment. He surrounded himself with a most select library, including many invaluable manuscripts, and a precious collection of medals and other antiquities, which, with the society of the learned whom he attracted to his board, gave to his house a wide celebrity. It was not regarded as at all degraded by the presence of an avowed mistress at its head, with whom he openly lived for many years, and had several children; and neither this scandal, nor the gross indecency of some of his writings, prevented Paul III. from conferring upon him a scarlet hat in 1539. He is said to have accepted this dignity unwillingly, but having done so, he had the good sense at all events to "cleanse the outside of the cup and platter." His mistress was now dead; he laid aside poetry, literature, and pagan idioms, and, devoting himself to theological studies, at which he had formerly sneered in the habit of an abbé, he entered holy orders at the mature age of sixty-nine. In 1541 he succeeded Fregoso, his early companion at Urbino, in the bishopric of Gubbio, to which was added that of Bergamo. How little these preferments contributed to his comfort appears from a letter to Veronica Gambara in December, 1543. "Often," he there says, "do I desire to be the unfettered Bembo of other days, rather than as I now am. But what better can one make of it? Man's existence, abounding more in crosses than in gratifying incidents, will have it so; and wiser he who least desponds and best puts up to necessity, than one that less conforms to it. Yet I own myself unable to do