This town of Villeneuve is
of very ancient origin, and owes its existence, it is said, to the
famous holiness of a female saint, which gathered round her abode and
burial-place a great many habitations of people who reverenced her. She
was the daughter of the King of Saragossa, and I presume she chose this
site because it was so rocky and desolate. Afterwards it had a long
mediaeval history; and in the time of the Avignon popes, the cardinals,
regretful of their abandoned Roman villas, built pleasure-houses here, so
that the town was called Villa Nueva. After they had done their best, it
must have seemed to these poor cardinals but a rude and sad exchange for
the Borghese, the Albani, the Pamfili Doria, and those other perfectest
results of man's luxurious art. And probably the tradition of the Roman
villas had really been kept alive, and extant examples of them all the
way downward from the times of the empire. But this Villeneuve is the
stoniest, roughest town that can be imagined.
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