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 custode, 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, and at once set off for 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 laugliing 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 munnur ? " 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 icc 
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. 
