The Romany Rye

- Nepotism - Donna Olympia - Omnipotence

some lump sugar, then taking the gotch 33 I fetched water from the spring, and, sitting down, begged the man in black to help himself; he was not slow in complying with my desire, and prepared for himself a glass of hollands and water with a lump of sugar in it. After he had taken two or three sips with evident satisfaction, I, remembering his chuckling exclamation of 'Go to Rom

he Pope, however, and his relations, whose cellars were at that time full of the money of the church, which they had been plundering for years, refused to lend him a scudo; whereupon a pasquinade picture was stuck up at Rome, representing the church lying on a bed, gashed with dreadful wounds, and beset all over with flies, which were sucking her, whilst the Emperor of Germany was kneeling before h

an the relations of Urban the Eighth, at whose death, according to the book called the "Nipotismo di Roma," 35 there were in the Barbarini family two hundred and twenty-seven governments, abbeys, and high dignities; and so much hard cash in their possession that threescore and ten mules were scarcely sufficient to convey the plund

to take care of his life, and to see that nothing unholy was put into his food, or a bustling, stirring brother's wife like Donna Olympia. He then, with a he! he! he! asked me if I had ever read the book called the 'Nipotismo di Roma,' and on my replying in the negative, he told me that it was a very curious and entertaining book, which he occasionally looked at in an idle hour, and proceeded to relate to me anecdotes out of the 'Nipotismo di Roma,' about the successor of Urban, Innocent the Tenth, and Donna Olympia, showing how fond he

, notwithstanding its occasional disorders, went on. Popes and cardinals might prey upon its bowels, and sell its interests, but the system survived. The cutting off of this or that member was not able to cause Rome any vital loss; for, as soon as she lost a member, the loss was supplied

to expect that the Pope could always guard himself from poison. Then, after looking at me for a moment stedfastly and taking another sip, he told me that Popes had frequently done impossibilities. For example, Innocent the Tenth had created a nephew; for, not liking particularly any of his real nephews, he had created the said Camillo Astalli his nephew; asking me, with a he! he! 'What but omnipotence could make a young man nephew to a person to whom he was not in the slightest degree related?' On my observing that of course no one believed that the young fellow was really the Pope's nephew, though the Pope might have adopted him as such, the man in black replied, 'that the reality of the nephewship of Camillo Astalli had hitherto never become a point of faith; let, however, the present Pope, or any other Pope, proclaim that it is necessary to believe in the reality of the nephewship of Camillo Astalli, and see whether the faithful would not believe in it. Who can doubt that,' he added, 'seeing that they believe in the reality of t

d adjusting her person a little, she came and sat down by us. In the meantime I had helped my compani