1 12 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
from the thief, saying she ought to be thankful for what he had left her. The Pope, to console 
her, made her a present of thirty thousand scudi. This was in August, 1654. 
The last time Innocent left the Vatican was in December of the same year, when he was 
carried in a litter to Donna Olimpia’s garden in the Trastevere. His health was failing fast, 
and after this she never left him. Other ladies who had striven for his favours tried to see him, 
but Olimpia fought them all off, herself locked his chamber door at night, and everv night bore 
away the gold received during the day. Every day money was paid in for benefices, for 
bishoprics, for negotiations, and she is said in ten days to have carried off five hundred thousand 
francs. Just at the last the general of the Jesuits forbade her access to the Pope, but immediatelv 
after his death she forced her way back, and dragged from under the very bed on which the bodv lay 
two cases of gold, with which she escaped. Then, with cold-blooded irony, as the question arose 
as to who was to pay for the obsequies of the dead sovereign, she refused to disburse the cost of 
122. — SOUTH-WEST END OF GARDEN 
even a modest funeral, saying, what could a poor widow render in the way of funeral honours 
worthy of a great pontiff' ? 
Olimpia tried in vain to conciliate the new Pope, Alexander VII. She even relaxed her 
usual avarice so far as to send him two gold vases, asking to be allowed to kiss his feet, but the 
present was returned with the message that the Vatican was not a place for women. vSoon after 
she received an intimation requiring her to leave Rome, and the rest of her life was passed in a villa 
near Viterbo. She is said to have left two millions of gold scudi, and her heirs contrived to 
keep tight hold of it, in spite of the attempts of Alexander to recover a part. 
Nowhere do so many traces of her remain to-day as in the magnificent villa erected on the 
Janiculum for her son, Camillo. A villa had become the indispensable adjunct of every 
great Roman family. This villa, erected from the designs of Falda by Algardi, and filled 
with memorials of Olimpia, is second to none in ample magnificence. The site on the 
Janiculum is that of the ancient gardens of Galba, and here the murdered Emperor is supposed 
to have been buried a.d. 69, by his devoted slave Argius. Bartoli says that the villa was 
