By the bye, these gallerie lead from Albano to the neighboring village of Frascati, an archiepiscopal see, and once the retreat of the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts. He himself, with his unfortunate brother, is buried in St. Peter's; but in the village church of which he was titular archbishop is a tablet to his memory, recounting his many virtues, and the love and veneration in which his flock ever held him.
Frascati is the scene of the second reminiscence I have once before spoken of; one more domestic and more intimate than the last, and very interesting as being the record of an unusual favor shown to a foreigner by the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX.
There are a great many villas around Frascati, and one of the prettiest as well as most historical is the Villa Falconieri, the whilom abode of Santa Juliana Falconieri, to whom a chapel is dedicated in the house. The grounds are, as in most Italian villas, very badly kept (according to Northern ideas), but in their wildness more beautiful than the trimmest garden of Old or New England. A winding, steep road, bordered with box, leads to the mansion, whose wide marble chambers re-echo the few footsteps they ever bear, and whose best preserved ornaments are some marble busts and old frescoes. To the front stretches a lawn dotted with Spanish chestnut-trees, and beyond lies an alley of hoary and gigantic cypresses that seem the enchanted genii of perpetual silence. There is a peculiar odor about cypress-trees which can never be forgotten by one who has been much among these groves of living columns; and it is a well-known fact that the charm inherent in a familiar odor is one of the strongest that exists. Not only in this alley, a mile long, leading up through a maze of thickets to the ruins of Tusculum, but also in a weird quadrangle planted round a stone-coped pond, do these trees stand in their stern and sad majesty. Here, again, is silence, reigning undisputed; the grand path is grassy with weeds; the little cones drop into it and are never swept away; the brown branches of the trees fall upon it in autumn, and remain there till they decay into the soil; the water is stagnant, and the artificial rock-work in the centre of the pond is neglected and overgrown with crops of worthless yet not unlovely weeds. A landscape gardener would form and draw out a new map of these mismanaged acres; a painter would shout for joy at this picturesque frame for a historical love-scene, and would transfer the whole to his canvas, adding only, according to his fancy, the pale moon silvering the mysterious trees, or the setting sun, in its amethyst radiance, throwing golden arrows through the glorious openings of the cypress grove.
This villa of Santa Juliana Falconieri was once let, now many, many years ago, to an Englishman, a recent convert, and a well-known and zealous defender of his newly adopted faith. He was not unfrequently a guest at the neighboring monastery of Camaldoli, a beautiful hermitage embosomed in the woods, and where the white-robed monks follow a strict and ascetic rule, very different from the lives of hypocritical holiness that Protestants and liberators would make us believe is the present type of monastic perfection. One day, when the temporary owner of the Villa Falconieri was dining at the Camaldolese convent, the Holy Father, whose summer residence is close by, at a little village called Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the classic Lake Nemi, came with his retinue to visit the monks. He also stayed to dinner, which in Italy and among religious is in the middle of the day, and, the visit over, he spontaneously proposed to his English friend to make another halt at his house. A message was sent down in haste to prepare the villa, and so few were the servants there that it was not before the cavalcade of the Pope was at the head of the cypress alley that the end nearest the house was swept and cleaned. The wife and little daughter were ready to welcome the Holy Father, as his host introduced him into the pretty, picturesque dwelling. A throne had been temporarily arranged at the further end of the drawing-room, and a square of gold-edged velvet placed at the feet. The "Noble Guard," part of the Pontifical retinue, took their places around the room, seemingly a living wall, and other ecclesiastical attendants grouped themselves in various corners. This was an honor seldom bestowed on any but Roman princes, and then very sparingly, so that it was all the more a distinguished mark of personal friendship on the part of the good and fatherly Pope toward his English child. Not long before, those three, the father and mother and little daughter, had knelt before the Pope, and the parents had resolved and promised to embrace outwardly the religion they inwardly believed; the child had unknowingly played with its father's sword, and prattled, as unconscious little ones do, in the midst of these grave events.
Now, the child was not forgotten either, and the Holy Father kept it near his throne, and bestowed especial attention upon it, even while he conversed with the steadfast and happy parents. By-and-by, the Noble Guard were dismissed, and bivouacked outside the house, under the chestnut-trees, till it was dark. Then lanterns were hung on the branches and on the tall gates, and a regular illumination took place. When the Pope left, torches were carried around him and his cortége, all through the woods that cover the ground between Frascati and Castel Gandolfo. A tablet was put up in the vestibule or atrium of the villa, with the permission of the owner of the property, in commemoration of this signal honor conferred upon a stranger. These details are only a part of the many-sided recollections of this day, but, such as they are, they come from the lips of an eye-witness, and we are not conscious that they are in any degree exaggerated.
Nearly twelve years after this memorable visit, the villa was revisited by some of the persons who had been its temporary occupants during that occurrence, and it was found to be in exactly the same state as before; the dark cypress alley and the quadrangle, the chestnut-shaded lawn and deserted-looking house, showing no sign of the lapse of time. The former owner, however—a Cardinal Falconieri, I believe—was dead, and the property was disputed by two or three noble families. The chapel of Santa Juliana stood open to the terrace, accessible from the outside as well as from the narrow inner passage connecting it with the house; and on one side of its tiny walls was the picture of the saint's death-bed, representing the miraculous communion by way of viaticum, when the blessed sacrament sank into her breast because her sickness was of such a nature as to prevent her from receiving it into her mouth. Below the picture is a long explanation of this fact, and a sort of laudatory epitaph in the saint's honor.
The villa Aldobrandini occupies one of the most prominent positions in Frascati, and commands attention from its tiers of stone fountains, raised amphitheatre-like one over the other up the face of the hill, and arranged so as to let an artificial waterfall spring down the giant staircase.
Another notable building of this village is the white-walled Capuchin convent, a nest among the trees and rocks, where the little chapel is railed off by heavy gates from the poor vestibule, and where lived once a very good and eloquent monk, Padre Silvestro. He too, like the old cardinal, died within the years that followed the visit of the Pope to the Villa Falconieri, but his kindness to little children and his well-known powers of language alike cause him to live for ever in the heart and memory of those whose happiness it was to know him.
He always seemed to the writer the very type of Manzoni's renowned "Padre Cristofaro," one of the noblest creatures of that author's world-famed romance, I Promessi Sposi.
And with this mention of him and his quiet convent—which is now, perhaps, a desecrated stable or barrack—let us close this little sketch of a well-remembered and beloved spot, endeared to us by many happy hours spent among its hills and woods, and by the memory of one of God's best and purest creatures, one worthy of more gratitude, more love, and more appreciation than our poor heart was ever able to render her. To her, once our guide on earth, now our guardian, we trust, in heaven, do we dedicate these few mementoes of our happy companionship in a land whose beauty she always taught us to look upon as the chosen appanage of the Vicar of Christ, and the Jerusalem of the new law.