The poor Duchess was infinitely chagrined by all these circumstances.  The “insane and outrageous expenses” in which the nuptials had involved her, the rebukes of her husband, the sneers of the seigniors, the undutiful epigrams of her son, the ridicule of the people, affected her spirits to such a degree, harassed as she was with grave matters of state, that she kept her rooms for days together, weeping, hour after hour, in the most piteous manner.  Her distress was the town talk; nevertheless, the fleet arrived in the autumn, and brought the youthful Maria to the provinces.  This young lady, if the faithful historiographer of the Farnese house is to be credited, was the paragon of princesses.

   [This princess, in her teens, might already exclaim, with the
   venerable Faustus: 

          “Habe nun Philosophie
          Juristerei and Medicin
          Und leider ach:  Theologie
          Durch studirt mit heissem Bemuhen,” etc.

   The panegyrists of royal houses in the sixteenth century were not
   accustomed to do their work by halves.—­Strada.]

She was the daughter of Prince Edward, and granddaughter of John the Third.  She was young and beautiful; she could talk both Latin and Greek, besides being well versed in philosophy, mathematics and theology.  She had the scriptures at her tongue’s end, both the old dispensation and the new, and could quote from the fathers with the promptness of a bishop.  She was so strictly orthodox that, on being compelled by stress of weather to land in England, she declined all communication with Queen Elizabeth, on account of her heresy.  She was so eminently chaste that she could neither read the sonnets of Petrarch, nor lean on the arm of a gentleman.  Her delicacy upon such points was, indeed, carried to such excess, that upon one occasion when the ship which was bringing her to the Netherlands was discovered to be burning, she rebuked a rude fellow who came forward to save her life, assuring him that there was less contamination in the touch of fire than in that of man.  Fortunately, the flames were extinguished, and the Phoenix of Portugal was permitted to descend, unburned, upon the bleak shores of Flanders.

The occasion, notwithstanding the recent tears of the Duchess, and the arrogance of the Prince, was the signal for much festivity among the courtiers of Brussels.  It was also the epoch from which movements of a secret and important character were to be dated.  The chevaliers of the Fleece were assembled, and Viglius pronounced before them one of his most classical orations.  He had a good deal to say concerning the private adventures of Saint Andrew, patron of the Order, and went into some details of a conversation which that venerated personage had once held with the proconsul Aegeas.  The moral which he deduced from his narrative was the necessity of union among the magnates for the maintenance of the Catholic faith; the nobility and the Church being