at the young Prince was a mere compound of pride
and emptiness. "There is nothing at all in the man," said Chantonnay.
Certainly the expression was not a fortunate one. Time was to show that
there was more in the man than in all the governors despatched
successively by Philip to the Netherlands; but the proof was to be
deferred to a later epoch. Meantime, his mother was occupied and
exceedingly perplexed with his approaching nuptials. He had been
affianced early in the year to the Princess Donna Maria of Portugal. It
was found necessary, therefore, to send a fleet of several vessels to
Lisbon, to fetch the bride to the Netherlands, the wedding being
appointed to take place in Brussels. This expense alone was considerable,
and the preparations for banquets, jousts, and other festivities, were
likewise undertaken on so magnificent a scale that the Duke, her husband,
was offended at Margaret's extravagance. The people, by whom she was not
beloved, commented bitterly on the prodigalities which they were
witnessing in a period of dearth and trouble. Many of the nobles mocked
at her perplexity. To crown the whole, the young Prince was so obliging
as to express the hope, in his mother's hearing, that the bridal fleet,
then on its way from Portugal, might sink with all it contained, to the
bottom of the sea.

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