io8 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



rid. She married Paolo Nini, a noble of Viterbo. Both he and her little son died almost 

 immediately. Soon after she married Pamfilio Pamphilj, a soldier, who seems to have been a 

 rough and unkind husband, but he died in 1639, leaving Donna Olimpia, however, with 

 three sons. She is forty-five before we hear much more of her, but for many years past she 

 had been gaining that influence, which was to make her fortune, over her brother-in-law, the 

 abbe, who became Pope five years after Pamfilio 's death. When her husband died Olimpia 

 was still a young and beautiful woman, but she gave up all idea of pleasure, renouncing all 

 weaknesses of sex, only going into the world when it was politic to do so, devoting all her ener- 

 gies to becoming a power and influence in the life of her brother-in-law, who was to become 

 Innocent X. To him, by character melancholy and undecided, her firm, optimistic nature, full 

 of cheerfulness and sympathy, soon became absolutely necessary. When the Pope was elected 

 the people swarmed, according to custom, to exercise their privilege of sacking the Pamphilj palace, 



Il8. NORTH SIDE OF THE VILLA. 



but Olimpia had already prudently removed all the valuable furniture and tapestries, leaving 

 them only the rubbish to prey upon. 



From the first she established a splendid position for herself, only asking the most exalted 

 persons to share her banquets, and Cardinals and magnates, say the contemporary chronicles, 

 bowed before her, as her chair, with a baldaquin over it, was borne into the halls of the greatest 

 nobles and into the palaces of ambassadors. 



She lived in the Pamphilj palace in Piazza Navona, and the diarists of the time record many 

 of her visits to the Vatican and those of the Pope paid to her in return. It seemed, they say, 

 as if she were an integral part of his grandeur. After every event, every ceremony of import- 

 ance he would come and sup with Donna Olimpia, sometimes she would carry him off to spend 

 the day in the garden of some villa, and together they visited the great artists of the day. 

 Olimpia was received everywhere, and even had permission to enter monasteries where women 

 were not admitted, being even entertained by the monks at luncheon. What her real relations 



