THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
Lateran, and instead of Innocentius Pont. Max., 
was “Olimpia prima papessa.”’ Every effort was 
made to find and punish the authors of these 
satires, but without success. Still more insulting 
was the report in Rome that a play, entitled “ The 
Marriage of the Pope,” had been played in London 
before Cromwell, ending with a ballet of monks 
and nuns. It seems doubtful whether such a play 
was ever acted, but the report, none the less, enraged 
the Pope and his dominant sister-in-law. Parties 
were formed against her, and the gazettes of the 
time are full of attacks and scurrilous stories ; but, 
in spite of occasional reverses, she held on her 
way, tenacious, determined to secure solid benefits. 
For a time the austere Cardinal Maculano worked 
upon the Pope to banish Olimpia from his Court, 
where her presence gave such scandal ; but, though 
openly withdrawn, she was still believed to pay 
secret visits and to watch vigilantly over her 
interests. Soon after the Cardinal died, and she 
was restored to her position. Gigli, in his amusing 
diary, speaks of a visit by the Pope, when he was 
carried in a sedan chair to the Pamphilj palace 
to condole with Olimpia, who had been robbed 
of some splendid jewels. An unlucky page was 
put to the torture without avail before an audacious 
letter was received from the thief, saying she ought 
to be thankful for what he had left her. The 
Pope, to console her, made her a present of 
30,000 scudi. This was in August, 1654. 
The last time Innocent left the Vatican was in 
December of the same year, when he was carried in 
a litter to Donna Olimpia’s garden in the Trastevere. 
His health was failing fast, and after this she never 
left him. Other ladies who had fought for his 
favours tried to see him, but Olimpia fought them 
all off, herself locked his chamber door at night, and 
every night bore away the gold received during the 
day. Every day money was paid in for benefices, for 
bishoprics, for negotiations, and she is said in ten 
days to have carried off 500,000 francs. Just at the 
last the general of the Jesuits forbade her access 
to him, but immediately after his death she forced 
her way back, and dragged from under the bed 
on which the body lay, two cases of gold, with 
which she escaped. Then with cold-blooded irony, 
as the question arose of who was to pay for the 
obsequies of the dead sovereign, she refused to 
disburse the cost of even a modest funeral, saying, 
what could a poor widow render in the Way of 
funeral honours worthy of a great pontiff? 
Olimpia tried in vain to conciliate the new 
Pope, Alexander VII. She even relaxed her usual 
avarice so far as to send him two gold vases, asking 
to be allowed to kiss his feet, but the present was 
returned with the message that the Vatican was 
not a place for women. She soon received an 
intimation to leave Rome, and passed the rest of 
her life in a villa near Viterbo. She is said to have 
left two millions of gold scudi, and her heirs 
contrived to keep a tight hold of it, in spite of 
the attempts of Alexander to recover a part. 
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27 
Nowhere do so many traces of her remain 
to-day as in the magnificent villa erected on the 
Janiculum for her son, Camillo. The villa had 
become the indispensable adjunct of every great 
Roman family. The castles of the Middle Ages, 
on the campagna, had fallen into ruin and disuse, 
and an outlet was needed from the palaces some- 
where, where magnates, cardinals, and ladies could 
walk and converse and enjoy the frivolous games 
and conceits then in vogue. And their idea of 
Nature consisted in arcades, in labyrinths, in shaded 
walks, in sparkling fountains, in sham-classic temples 
to Ceres and Diana, in miniature lakes and water- 
works. 
The villa erected from the designs of Falda 
by Algardi, and filled with memorials of Olimpia, 
was second to none in ample magnificence. ‘The 
position on the Janiculum is on the ancient site of 
the gardens of Galba, and here the murdered 
Emperor is supposed to have been buried, a.p. 69, 
by his devoted slave Argius. Bartoli says that it 
was built over thirty-four classic tombs of great 
beauty, forming “a small village with streets, side 
walks and squares.” It stands high above the 
city, and merits its old name of Belrespiro. Of 
all Italian palaces, it most resembles an English 
country seat. It is surrounded by a fairly exten- 
sive, undulating park, where they make hay in 
summer, and which is plentifully timbered with 
ilexes and stone pines. Nearer the house a cool, 
dark wood is railed off and inaccessible to the 
ordinary visitor, and the villa is surrounded by a 
finely-laid-out formal garden, with geometrical 
beds set in box edging, fountains and_ sundials, 
statues, and lemon trees in terra-cotta vases. In 
the little wood remains of classic times are freely 
studded about—here, an old sarcophagus, with 
flowers rising from it, as the old masters painted 
them in their Assumptions of the Virgin; there, a 
green mouldy altar, a mossy faun, a white marble 
figure of a Roman matron, a portico with twisted 
classic pillars; while on all sides gleam the blue- 
grey shafts of aloes. In one direction the eye 
travels over the wide campagna to where Monte 
Cavo, with its flat top, the site of the ancient 
temple of Jupiter Latiarius, towers above the soft 
range of the violet Alban hills, and looking in the 
other direction, there is such a view of St. Peter’s 
as is obtained from no other point. The great 
mass of Vatican buildings, surmounted by the dome, 
is seen by itself, cut off from the town by inter- 
vening hills. Behind it rises Monte Mario, and 
far away Soracte couches dimly on the plain. 
These gardens were the scene of fierce fighting 
in the siege of Rome in 1849, and a temple built 
in 1851 commemorates the French who fell here. 
A memorial of a different kind catches the eye, 
looking to the eastward slopes. The name “ Mary” 
in huge letters of clipped cypress reminds us that 
Lady Mary Talbot became the wife of Prince 
Doria in 1835 ; her sister Gwendoline married 
Prince Borghese. 
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