His ambition is alleged to have exceeded even the rise of his fortunes, and to have prompted him to contemplate, and possibly to intrigue for, his own elevation to the chair of St. Peter, in the event of a vacancy. His sudden death in 1520, soon after a residence of above a year as legate to Francis I. (who had conferred upon him the see of Constance), when coupled with such reports, was construed as the effect of poison administered by Leo. Indeed, his friend, Ludovico Canossa, observed that it was a received dogma among the French at that very time that every man of station who died in Italy was poisoned. But such vague conjectures, however specious under Alexander VI., are less credible in other pontificates; and if the Cardinal were poisoned, that practice was then by no means limited to popes. He was an accomplished dilettante when the standards of beauty were of pagan origin; and his intimacy with Raffaele dated after the painter's Umbrian inspirations had faded before a gradual homage to the "new manner." Like his friend Bembo, his morals were epicurean to the full licence of a dissolute age. His famed comedy of the _Calandra_,[*47] which was brought out at Urbino in 1508, and which gave full play to his exquisite sense of the ridiculous, justifies this charge, and all that we have so often to repeat of the laxity then prevalent in the most refined Italian circles. A notice of this, the only important production of his pen, and an account of its being magnificently performed before Guidobaldo, will be found in our twenty-fifth chapter. Those who regard the pontificate of Leo X. as the classic period of Italian letters must feel grateful to Cardinal Bibbiena for developing a portion of its lustre; the sterner moralist, who brands its vices, will charge him with pandering freely to the licence of a court of which he was a notable ornament. Castiglione tells us that an acute and ready genius rendered him the delight of all his acquaintance; and Baldi adds, that by practice in the papal court he so improved that gift, that his tact in business was unrivalled, to which his mild address, and happy talent of seasoning the dullest topics with graceful pleasantry, greatly contributed.