THE COLONNA GARDENS, 
and affectionate nature awoke again to love and 
happiness. The five following years were the 
happiest of her life. She had three children, she 
lived a gay and brilliant life in the beautiful palace, 
she gave fétes in the gardens. Six weeks after 
her first son’s birth she received visitors, sitting up 
in a wonderful bed made like a golden — shell, 
supported by sea-horses and with little loves 
holding back curtains of cloth of gold. She 
herself was dressed in fine lawn and Venetian 
point, her rippling black hair caught up with 
gems and with a necklace by Benvenuto Cellini 
round her throat. The despatches of the time 
are full of allusions to the lovely Connestabilessa 
and her marvellous bed. 
Suddenly all was changed ; from tenderness 
towards her husband, she becomes cold, and only 
long after do old documents unveil the truth, 
that she discovered an intrigue in which he was 
engaged with a Roman lady. From that time 
they drifted apart. Enough transpires to show 
how keenly Maria suffered, for his first infidelity 
was not the last by many. Yet she kept up the 
old gaiety with something of the power of 
enjoyment which never left her. Her lovely and 
reckless sister, Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, joined 
her, and a young Frenchman, Jacques de Belbceuf, 
gives us a_ vivid description of the balls and 
masquerades, the dinners, the music and conversa- 
tion which made up a society where all was ease 
and variety, and where the Princess Colonna and 
her sister won all hearts and turned all heads. 
Yet all the time her quarrels with her husband 
were increasing. In the spring of 1671 she was 
several times seized with violent illness, and was con- 
vinced that he was trying to poison her. Though 
it seems probable that the suspicion was unfounded, 
it became so strong that she at length resolved to 
escape and claim the protection that Louis XIV. 
had offered her, and she and her sister fled from 
Rome with one or two trusted servants. It would 
take too long to tell her adventures and disappoint- 
ments, for when, after incredible hardships by sea 
and land, she reached France, Louis refused to 
receive her. He wrote kindly, he placed a hand- 
some allowance at her disposal, but his recollection 
of her influence was too strong, and he would not 
risk the reopening of an old wound. 
In vain her husband urged her return. She 
was impressed, apparently not without some reason, 
with the certainty that he purposed to avail him- 
self of the excuse of her flight to shut her up in one 
of his lonely castles, where she would never be heard 
( 
94 
of again. Such things were not uncommon, and a 
letter from Cardinal Cibo, hinting at such imprison- 
ment, fell into her hands. She passed the next 
twenty years of her life in one convent or another, 
sometimes in France, sometimes in Spain. For a 
time she lived at the Court of Savoy, where its 
Duke, the chivalrous Charles Emmanuel, was 
sincerely and devotedly attached to her. 
There is a delightful account of her arrival 
at what was then one of the most brilliant Courts 
of Europe, and the stupefaction of the Duke at her 
appearance when he went to meet her shabby 
carriage. Her costume consisted of a red petticoat, 
trimmed with torn lace, a drab cloth coat, and, to 
keep out the cold, an ugly little woollen shawl, 
which she had put over her head and tied on with 
a blue scarf, and out of this frame looked a face 
of intense pallor illumined by two large dark eyes ; 
but soon those brilliant eyes, her smile, her beau- 
tiful teeth, her thrilling voice enchanted the Duke, 
and he was taken captive by this wayward, fanciful 
woman, who passed every moment from tears to 
gaiety, from laughter to despair. 
Her husband came to Spain, and they met 
“like lovers,’ but she would not trust him or risk 
her freedom. He even made one desperate attempt 
to kidnap her, and when that failed he went home 
and relapsed into profound melancholy. It is 
impossible not to feel for his desolated life. He 
seems to have been a good father to his three 
sons, and on his death-bed declared that through 
all his irregularities he had loved Maria the best. 
After his death, the woman, who all her life loved 
and suffered and enjoyed with such passionate 
vitality, came back to Rome and walked again in 
these gardens, overcome for a time by remorse at 
her hardness towards her husband. She would not 
stay in Rome, but went back to Madrid, though 
she often visited Italy and quarrelled with one 
daughter-in-law and adored another, and gave 
presents to her grand-daughters of fans and muffs 
of the last fashion in England. 
She kept her looks and her charm till late in 
life. When she was growing old, Louis XIV. 
sent a message permitting her to come to Versailles, 
but she refused to go, saying that her beauty was 
destroyed, and she never saw him again. She died 
at Pisa in 1706. She left exact directions to her 
son, Cardinal Colonna, and following these, she was 
buried in the place she died in, in the Church of 
the St. Sepulchre, and her epitaph is only : 
“Marta Mancini Cotonna. 
'  Dusr anp Asues.” 
) 
