DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19775#0103
THE COLONNA GARDENS.
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 with a necklace by Benvenuto Cellini
round 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 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 the 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 conversa-
tion 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 was con-
vinced that he was trying to poison her. Though
it seems probable that the suspicion was unfounded,
it became so strong that she at length resolved to
escape and claim the protection that Louis XIV.
had offered her, and she and her sister fled from
Rome with one or two trusted servants. It would
take too long to tell 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 hand-
some allowance 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 him-
self of the excuse of her flight to shut her up in one
of his lonely castles, where she would never be heard
of again. Such thing-s were not uncommon, and a
letter from Cardinal Cibo, hinting at such imprison-
ment, 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, was
sincerely and devotedly attached to her.
There is a delightful account of her arrival
at what was then one of the most brilliant Courts
of Europe, and the stupefaction of the Duke at her
appearance when he went to meet her shabby
carriage. Her costume consisted of a red petticoat,
trimmed with torn lace, a drab cloth coat, and, to
keep out the cold, an ugly little woollen shawl,
which she had put over her head and tied on with
a blue scarf, and out of this frame looked a face
of intense pallor illumined by two large dark eyes ;
but soon those brilliant eyes, her smile, her beau-
tiful teeth, her thrilling voice enchanted the Duke,
and he was taken captive by this wayward, fanciful
woman, who passed every moment from tears to
gaiety, from laughter to despair.
Her husband came to Spain, and they met
" like lovers," but she would not trust him or risk
her freedom. He even made one desperate attempt
to kidnap her, and when that failed he went home
and relapsed into profound melancholy. It is
impossible not to feel for his desolated lite. He
seems to have been a good father to his three
sons, and on his death-bed declared that through
all his irregularities he had loved Maria the best.
After his death, the woman, who all her life loved
and suffered and enjoyed with such passionate
vitality, came back to Rome and walked again in
these gardens, overcome for a time by remorse at
her hardness towards her husband. She would not
stay in Rome, but went back to Madrid, though
she often visited Italy and quarrelled with one
daughter-in-law and adored another, and gave
presents to her grand-daughters of fans and muffs
of the last fashion in England.
She kept her looks and her charm till late in
life. When she was growing old, Louis XIV.
sent a message permitting her to come to Versailles,
but she refused to go, saying that her beauty was
destroyed, and she never saw him again. She died
at Pisa in 1706. She left exact directions to her
son, Cardinal Colonna, and following these, she was
buried in the place she died in, in the Church of
the St. Sepulchre, and her epitaph is only :
" Maria Mancini Colonna.
Dust and Ashes."
( 94 )
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 with a necklace by Benvenuto Cellini
round 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 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 the 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 conversa-
tion 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 was con-
vinced that he was trying to poison her. Though
it seems probable that the suspicion was unfounded,
it became so strong that she at length resolved to
escape and claim the protection that Louis XIV.
had offered her, and she and her sister fled from
Rome with one or two trusted servants. It would
take too long to tell 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 hand-
some allowance 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 him-
self of the excuse of her flight to shut her up in one
of his lonely castles, where she would never be heard
of again. Such thing-s were not uncommon, and a
letter from Cardinal Cibo, hinting at such imprison-
ment, 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, was
sincerely and devotedly attached to her.
There is a delightful account of her arrival
at what was then one of the most brilliant Courts
of Europe, and the stupefaction of the Duke at her
appearance when he went to meet her shabby
carriage. Her costume consisted of a red petticoat,
trimmed with torn lace, a drab cloth coat, and, to
keep out the cold, an ugly little woollen shawl,
which she had put over her head and tied on with
a blue scarf, and out of this frame looked a face
of intense pallor illumined by two large dark eyes ;
but soon those brilliant eyes, her smile, her beau-
tiful teeth, her thrilling voice enchanted the Duke,
and he was taken captive by this wayward, fanciful
woman, who passed every moment from tears to
gaiety, from laughter to despair.
Her husband came to Spain, and they met
" like lovers," but she would not trust him or risk
her freedom. He even made one desperate attempt
to kidnap her, and when that failed he went home
and relapsed into profound melancholy. It is
impossible not to feel for his desolated lite. He
seems to have been a good father to his three
sons, and on his death-bed declared that through
all his irregularities he had loved Maria the best.
After his death, the woman, who all her life loved
and suffered and enjoyed with such passionate
vitality, came back to Rome and walked again in
these gardens, overcome for a time by remorse at
her hardness towards her husband. She would not
stay in Rome, but went back to Madrid, though
she often visited Italy and quarrelled with one
daughter-in-law and adored another, and gave
presents to her grand-daughters of fans and muffs
of the last fashion in England.
She kept her looks and her charm till late in
life. When she was growing old, Louis XIV.
sent a message permitting her to come to Versailles,
but she refused to go, saying that her beauty was
destroyed, and she never saw him again. She died
at Pisa in 1706. She left exact directions to her
son, Cardinal Colonna, and following these, she was
buried in the place she died in, in the Church of
the St. Sepulchre, and her epitaph is only :
" Maria Mancini Colonna.
Dust and Ashes."
( 94 )