PALAZZO BORGHESE, AND THE COLONNA GARDENS, ROME. 95 



The Constable, who at this time adored his beautiful young wife, was always planning 

 something new. As the heat of the day declined he would take her in a light carriage, drawn 

 at a gallop by six matchless Barbs, to the Villa Borghese, which Prince Borghese had lent to him. 

 Strolling in those wonderful gardens, listening to soft music, Maria drank in all the intoxication 

 of the Roman nights. She was only twenty, and, with a charming and devoted lover whispering 

 in her ear, her warm 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 fetes 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 

 a necklace by Benvenuto Cellini himself around 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 had 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 a power 

 of enjoyment which never left her. Her lovely 

 and reckless sister, Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, 

 joined her, and a young Frenchman, Jacques 

 de Belbreuf, gives us a vivid description of the 

 balls and masquerades, the dinners, the music 

 and conversation 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 

 became convinced that he was trying to poison 

 Though it seems probable that the sus- 



her. 



picion was unfounded, it became so strong that 

 she at length resolved to escape and claim the 

 protection that Louis XIV had offered to her ; 

 accordingly she and her sister fled from Rome 



1MANTA DfL PALAZZO DELL EM SIG CARD COLONWA IKBORGa 



104. PALAZZO COLONNA IN BORGO, NEAR 

 ST. PETER'S, ROME. 



with one or two trusted servants. It would take too long to tell of 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 handsome 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 himself of the excuse of her flight to shut 

 her up in one of his lonely castles, where she would never be heard of again. Such things were 

 not uncommon, and a letter from Cardinal Cibo, hinting at such imprisonment, 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 of the 

 Courts of Europe, and of the stupefaction of the Duke at her appearance when he went out to 



