CAPRAROLA. 235 



After 1750, for a hundred years or more, the place was utterly neglected. A steward was 

 placed in charge, and was so little overlooked that he became reckless enough to sell the whole of 

 the piping of the fountains, no less than ninety-six thousand pounds of lead, besides making away 

 with much of the old furniture and tapestries and cutting down timber. Now the administration 

 has gone to the other extreme, and the place is guarded as if every tourist were a conspirator in 

 disguise. To avoid disappointment, it is well to say that no one should go without an order, 

 obtainable at the Farnese palace in Rome ; a special one is needed to see the garden, and yet 

 another in order to sketch. The cnstode, it may be added, is absolutely incorruptible. 



Among the past records of Caprarola is a love story, pretty and idyllic enough. In 1645 

 Innocent X had made a cardinal of Camillo, the son of Olimpia Pamphili. Don Camillo was 

 then only twenty-three, and two years later fell deeply in love with Olimpia Aldobrandini, the 

 beautiful young widow of Prince Borghese. He was a Cardinal " not in orders," and therefore 

 confessed to the Pope that " much as he admired the virtue of chastity, he felt himself unable 

 to practise it without the help of a wife." The Pope, who, we may presume, attached less 

 importance to the virtue than to the revenues of the Cardinalate, was furious, and did all he could 

 to change the young man's resolution. There was a great deal of family consultation and 

 interchange of correspondence, but Don Camillo got his way. He and Olimpia were married 

 in February, 1647, anc ^ at once set ff f r Caprarola, where, to the " great astonishment of all 

 Rome," they spent the whole spring and summer, which that year was unusually long and hot. 

 Donna Olimpia was twenty-four, " beautiful, ingenuous, and full of spirit and amiability, and, 

 in spite of some feminine weaknesses, had all those gifts which can ensure domestic felicity." 



It is charming to imagine the delight of that long summer in this enchanted garden, while 

 all their artificial and mannered world marvelled at their taste. The memory of them has a 

 tender charm of its own beside all the dull records of state visits and solemn splendour. 



Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, 

 Haply, of lovers, none ever may know, 

 Whose eyes went seaward, a hundred sleeping 

 Years ago. 



Heart handfast in heart, did they stand ? " Look hither," 

 Did he murmur? "Look out from the land to the sea, 

 For the foam-flowers endure when the land-blossoms wither, 

 And men that love lightly may die, but we . . ." 



Only, instead of the sea, there are the soft waves of the campagna. 



Caprarola must be grim and dreary enough in the winter-time or when wind and rain 

 storms sweep across the plain. It is a place for halcyon days and happiness. Who, nowadays, 

 builds anything so grandiose, so useless and so beautiful ? E. M. P. 



