The vices of the rich are never forgotten by the people, and the
traditions that still are current in Rome about Donna Olimpia [278]
are such that I have had to refuse to listen to them. But I feel
bound to mention them here, because it is curious that they should so
live on for more than two hundred years (the traditions of Sciarra
Colonna, however, are six hundred years old). They have, doubtless,
rather gained than lost in transmission. Cardinal Camillo Pamfili,
Donna Olimpia's son, presents one of those rare instances of which
history has only five or six in all to record, in which, for the
sake of keeping up the succession to a noble or royal house, it has
been permitted [279] to leave the ecclesiastical state for married
life. [280] The singularity of this incident has impressed it in
the memory of the people, and her promotion of it has contributed
to magnify, not only the fantastic element in their narratives, but
also the popular feeling against her; thus she is accused of having
had a second object in promoting it, namely, to get the place in
the pontifical household thus vacated filled by a very simple [281]
nephew, and thus increase her own importance at the papal court. The
pasquinades written about her in her own age were such that Cancellieri
[282] tells us 'spies were set, dressed in silk attire, to discover
the authors of such lampoons (motti vituperosi).'