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 matehless 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 Belbceuf, 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 
her. Though it seems probable that the sus- 
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 
with one or two trusted servants. It w^ould 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 allow'ance 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 w'ould 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, w'as sincerely and devotedly attached to her. 
There is a delightful account of her arrival at wdiat was then one of the most brilliant of the 
Courts of Europe, and of the stupefaction of the Duke at her appearance wdren he went out to 
104. — PALAZZO COLONNA IN BORGO, NEAR 
ST. Peter’s, rome. 
