Two years long, she endured this terrible punishment, and died mad, on the 18th of December, 1577.  On the following day, she was buried in the electoral tomb at Meissen; a pompous procession of “school children, clergy, magistrates, nobility, and citizens” conducting her to that rest of which she could no longer be deprived by the cruelty of man nor her own violent temperament.

[It can certainly be considered no violation of the sanctity of archives to make these slender allusions to a tale, the main features of which have already been published, not only by mm.  Groan v.  Prinsterer and Bakhuyzen, in Holland, but by the Saxon Professor Bottiger, in Germany.  It is impossible to understand the character and career of Orange, and his relations with Germany, without a complete view of the Saxon marriage.  The extracts from the “geomantic letters” of Elector Augustus, however, given in Bottiger (Hist.  Taschenb. 1836, p. 169-173), with their furious attacks upon the Prince and upon Charlotte of Bourbon, seem to us too obscene to be admitted, even in a note to these pages, and in a foreign language.]

So far, therefore, as the character of Mademoiselle de Bourbon and the legitimacy of her future offspring were concerned, she received ample guarantees.  For the rest, the Prince, in a simple letter, informed her that he was already past his prime, having reached his forty-second year, and that his fortune was encumbered not only with settlements for his, children by previous marriages, but by debts contracted in the cause of his oppressed country.  A convention of doctors and bishops of France; summoned by the Duc de Montpensier, afterwards confirmed the opinion that the conventual vows of the Princess Charlotte had been conformable neither to the laws of France nor to the canons of the Trent Council.  She was conducted to Brill by Saint Aldegonde, where she was received by her bridegroom, to whom she was united on the 12th of June.  The wedding festival was held at Dort with much revelry and holiday making, “but without dancing.”

In this connexion, no doubt the Prince consulted his inclination only.  Eminently domestic in his habits, he required the relief of companionship at home to the exhausting affairs which made up his life abroad.  For years he had never enjoyed social converse, except at long intervals, with man or woman; it was natural, therefore, that he should contract this marriage.  It was equally natural that he should make many enemies by so impolitic a match.  The Elector Palatine, who was in place of guardian to the bride, decidedly disapproved, although he was suspected of favoring the alliance.  The Landgrave of Hesse for a time was furious; the Elector of Saxony absolutely delirious with rage.  The Diet of the Empire was to be held within a few weeks at Frankfort, where it was very certain that the outraged and influential Elector would make his appearance, overflowing with anger,