io6 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



I 



CHAPTER X. 

 VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA, ROME. 



T makes one's hair stand on end," says Edmond About in his Rome Contemporaine, ' to 

 read the figures of the dowries with which the Jesuit decision, during the reign of 

 Innocent X, permitted the Pope to enrich the various members of his House." It was 

 laid down as being his privilege that he might assure the future of his family by gifts of 

 his savings from the Holy See. According to this judgment, the pontiff, without being considered 

 over-lavish, might spend four hundred thousand francs a year, and might give a dowry of nine 

 hundred thousand francs to each of his nieces. The Pope, therefore, set about founding the 

 Pamphilj family, and in this laudable work he was ably assisted by his sister-in-law, Olimpia 

 Pamphilj, one of those strange personalities which stands out from the past in a vignette and 

 creates an impression fresh and still vivid even after the lapse of more than two hundred years. 

 Olimpia was born in 1594 at Viterbo ; her father, Andrea Maidalchini, was a man of no 

 particular importance, and his daughter was at first destined for a convent, but though taken 

 there as a child, she had the strength of mind to resist violently, and finding she could not make 

 an impression in any other way, she accused her confessors of making love to her, and thus early 

 acquired the character of a dangerous inmate of whom the nuns were only too thankful to be 



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116, ST. PETER'S FROM THE CARRIAGE DRIVE. 



