io6 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
CHAPTER X. 
VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA, ROME. 
I 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 m 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. 
Ohmpia was born m 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 m 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 
1 16 , — ST. Peter’s from the carriage drive. 
