PALAZZO BORGHESE, AND THE COLONNA GARDENS, ROME. 97 



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. Out of this frame looked a face of intense pallor illumined 

 by two large dark eyes ; but soon those brilliant eyes, her smile, her beautiful teeth, her thrilling 

 voice had enchanted the Duke, and he too was taken captive by this wayward, fanciful woman, 

 who passed in a moment from tears to gaiety, and 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 a 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 where she 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 so she never saw him again. She died at Pisa in 1706, leaving 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 : 



MARIA MANCINI COLONNA. 



DUST AND ASHES. E. M. P. 



