The Kings' Mistresses by Elizabeth Goldsmith

traveling throughout Europe. In each spot where she settled, she found herself always a little too attracted to risk and intrigue, a little too trusting of all who offered her their friendship. In 1702 she rented a house in Avignon, where she met a shady character named Don Alfio Morando de Mazarin, who claimed to be a long-lost relative with strong ties to Versailles. Within three months she had signed over her rights to several important family legacies, much to the consternation of her sons. Later she fell almost as quickly in the thrall of another confidence man, this time a monk named Father Florent, whom she obliged by introducing him to various important and wealthy personages whom he proceeded to rob, shamelessly.
    It was to bring suit against this renegade that she returned to Paris in 1704, for the first time in forty-four years, and the last time in her life. She found herself once again close to the French court and king. But neither Marie nor Louis made any attempt at a meeting. She did write to her son of how she felt to be once again in the city of her youth: “You will be surprised to know I am so close to Paris, in one of my brother’s houses in the country, just a half league away. . . . Paris is well worth being seen by everyone. I find it much more beautiful than I had left it. The streets, the bridges, and the buildings are like nowhere else.” 11 It would be only in the last two or three years of her life that Marie seemed to finally settle into a more peaceful rhythm for her existence, visiting her sons but living in her own homes in Genoa and Livorno, and returning frequently to her beloved Venice.
    It was in Pisa, Italy, on the morning of May 10, 1715, that the Reverend Father Ascanio was interrupted at his duties in the church of Santo Sepulcro by a servant come to tell him that Princess Colonna was in the city and was summoning him to the home of her relative the Duke Salvati. Ascanio was surprised. He had known Marie Mancini Colonna since the years immediately following the
death of her estranged husband, when she had first dared to return to Italy from her long exile in Spain. She had found in this intelligent Spanish monk a sympathetic listener and adviser whenever she was in Pisa, and had come to rely on him for advice on matters legal as well as spiritual. He had counseled her on the writing of her will. But her sons and family residence were in Rome, and Ascanio had not, on this occasion, received any advance notice of her visit. As he walked to the Salvati palazzo he must have been perplexed and perhaps concerned, reflecting sadly on the lady’s age and on the recent events that had befallen her, and marveling at the energy that kept this inveterate traveler perpetually on the road. Just a few months before, she had suffered two bereavements, first that of her younger sister, Marianne, Duchess of Bouillon, and then an even heavier blow, the death of her eldest son, Filippo. Marianne’s death had been sudden and entirely unexpected. Of the surviving Mancini siblings, she was known as the one with the most charming temperament, always lively, always seeming innocent and youthful. Upon receiving the letter informing her of this death, Marie must have thought back to many moments in her own adventurous life when her young sister had been one of her few loyal friends. Filippo’s death had been less of a surprise, as it came at the end of a long illness, but he was her firstborn son. He had been the first to forgive her for leaving her children behind when she fled her husband’s household, and in later years he had been her most faithful family correspondent. Father Ascanio had heard that Marie Colonna had made a hurried and exhausting voyage by carriage from Livorno to Rome, arriving just in time to hold her son in her arms as he died.
    Now this seventy-five-year-old woman had traveled from the residence where she had been living in Livorno, and was back in Pisa,