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BOOK XIV
THE LADY OF TORTONA
1578-1590

I.

The marriage of her last remaining daughter, and the removal of her granddaughter to the French Court, loosened the ties that bound the Duchess-mother to Lorraine. The failure of the high hopes which Don John's coming had aroused were a grievous disappointment, and, after her dangerous attack of illness in the spring of 1578, Christina decided to follow her doctor's advice and seek a warmer climate. Her thoughts naturally turned to her dower city of Tortona, whose inhabitants still paid her allegiance, in spite of Philip's invasion of her privileges. Since the Spanish garrison still occupied the castle, the magistrates begged her to inhabit the Communal palace, and Christina, touched by their expressions of loyalty and affection, resolved to accept the offer.

Before settling at Tortona, however, she decided to make a pilgrimage to Loreto, the shrine for which the Lorraine Princes had always cherished especial veneration. Early in August, 1578, she left Nancy and travelled across the Alps, and through Savoy, by the route which she had taken as a bride, nearly half a century before. Her old friend, the Duchess Margaret, whose marriage had been one of the happiest results of the Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis, had already been dead four years, and her lord of the Iron-head was a confirmed invalid; but he sent his son, Charles Emanuel, to meet the Duchess and escort her to the citadel of Turin.

From Savoy, Christina proceeded to Milan, where she arrived on the 20th of August, and was hospitably entertained in the Castello by the Spanish Viceroy, the Marquis d'Ayamonte.[647] Once more she drove in her chariot through the streets where her coming had been hailed by rejoicing multitudes, once more she prayed by her husband's tomb in the Duomo and saw Leonardo's Cenacolo in Le Grazie. Her old friends, Count Massimiliano, the Trivulzi, and Dejanira, were dead and gone, and at every step the ghosts of bygone days rose up to haunt her memory. Then she travelled on by slow stages to Loreto, on the Adriatic shore, where she paid her vows at Our Lady's shrine, and offered a massive gold heart set with pearls and precious gems, to the admiration of future pilgrims.[648] But the long journey had overtaxed her strength, and when, on her return to Lombardy, she reached Ripalta, she was too ill to go any farther. Here she remained throughout the winter to recover from her fatigues and give the citizens of Tortona time to prepare for her reception.

At length, on the 17th of June, 1579, the Duchess made her state entry into the city. The magistrates met her at the gates with a stately baldacchino fringed with gold and silver, and escorted their Sovereign Lady to the house of Bartolommeo Busseto, where she alighted to partake of the banquet which had been prepared. Afterwards the loyal citizens accompanied her to the Palazzo Pubblico, halfway up the hill above the town, which had been splendidly fitted up for her occupation. The beauty of the view delighted the Duchess as much as the enthusiastic warmth of her reception, and the health-giving breezes of the Lombard city proved even more beneficial than her physicians had expected. "She came to our city of Tortona a dying woman, and lived there in health and comfort for more than ten years."[649] So wrote Niccolò Montemerlo, the historian whose chronicles of Tortona were published in 1618, when Christina had not yet been dead thirty years. His contemporaries joined with him in praising the Duchess's wise and beneficial rule, the strictness with which she administered justice, her liberality and benevolence.

Christina's administrative powers found ample scope in the government of the city, and under her rule Tortona enjoyed a brief spell of peace and prosperity. She reformed abuses, obtained the restitution of lost privileges, and healed a long-standing feud with the city of Ravenna. At her prayer, Pope Gregory XIII. repealed a decree exacting a heavy fine from every citizen of Tortona who entered Ravennese territory, and friendly communications were restored between the two cities. Before her coming, the Spanish Viceroy had incurred great unpopularity by building a new citadel on the heights occupied by the ancient Duomo and episcopal palace, and converting these into barracks and powder-magazines. In 1560 the foundations of a new Cathedral were laid by Philip's orders in the lower city, but this could not atone in the eyes of the citizens for the desecration of the venerated shrine founded by St. Innocent in the fourth century, and adorned with priceless mosaics and marbles. When, in 1609, the lofty campanile was struck by lightning, and 400 barrels of gunpowder stored in the nave exploded with terrific force, the accident was regarded as a Divine judgment, and the panic-stricken Spaniards joined in the solemn procession that bore the relics of the martyrs from their old resting-place to the new sanctuary.[651]

But if Christina could not atone for this indignity, or deliver Tortona from the presence of the hated Spaniards, she protected her subjects from their outrages, and rigidly enforced the observance of the law. Many were the petitions and remonstrances on behalf of her own rights and those of the citizens which she addressed to her dear and illustrious cousin, Don Carlos of Aragon, Duke of Terranuova, who reigned over the Milanese as Viceroy from 1583 to 1592. The Duchess was in frequent correspondence with her children beyond the Alps, and many requests for passes for horses which she is sending to Lorraine and Bavaria, as well as for privileges for her Equerries, Signor Alfonso and Gaspare Visconti, are to be found in the archives of Milan.[652]

Many were the illustrious guests, remarks Montemerlo, who came to visit the Duchess at Tortona. In October, 1581, the Empress-Dowager Maria, widow of Maximilian II., passed through Lombardy on her return to Spain, and was received at Alessandria by Madame de Lorraine. Together they drove through streets hung with tapestries and adorned with triumphal arches, until, after three days' festivities, they went on to Tortona, and thence to Genoa. The families of the old Milanese nobles who had remained loyal to the House of Sforza welcomed Christina's return to Lombardy with joy. The nephew and heir of Count Massimiliano Stampa placed his superb pleasure-house at Montecastello, in the fief of Soncino, at her disposal, and named his eldest son Christian in her honour. The Guaschi of Alessandria, the Counts of Oria, the Trivulzi, the Somaglia and Visconti, vied with each other in entertaining her sumptuously.[653] The saintly Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, visited her more than once, and the excellent Bishop of Tortona, Cesare Gambara, sought her help and advice in all that concerned the welfare of his people. From the day when, hardly more than a child herself, she begged Cardinal Caracciolo's protection for the destitute ladies at Pavia, Christina always cared for the poor and needy, and in her old age she was busy with active works of mercy. One of her last good actions was to send to Paris for Madame Castellani, a daughter of her old friend the Princess of Macedonia, who was living in reduced circumstances at the French Court, and bring her to Tortona to spend the rest of her life in peace and comfort. So she earned the love and gratitude of all around her, and thousands blessed the good Duchess's name long after she was dead.

II.

This last phase of Christina's life was on the whole peaceful and happy. Brantôme pitied this great lady, a daughter of Kings and niece of Emperors, and the rightful Queen of three kingdoms, who, after reigning over Milan and Lorraine, was reduced to hold her Court in an insignificant Lombard town, and was known in her last years as "Madame de Tortone."[654] But after her troubled life Christina was grateful for the peace and repose which she found at Tortona, and would have been perfectly content if it had not been for the continual annoyances to which she was exposed by Philip and his Ministers. From the moment that she settled in her dower city, the King began to dispute her right to its sovereignty, and insisted that, since Tortona had been settled upon her as an equivalent for the dower given her "out of pure liberality" by the late Emperor, she was bound to surrender her claims on payment of the sum in full. Christina, on her part, maintained with good reason that her claim to the city had never before been questioned, and that it was settled on her at her marriage, and belonged to her and her heirs of the House of Lorraine in perpetuity. The assertion of this claim roused Cardinal Granvelle to the highest indignation. "So dangerous a thing," he wrote to Philip, "cannot possibly be allowed." But, as he confessed, what made the situation awkward was that Madame de Lorraine's claims were strongly supported, not only by her son, Duke Charles, but by the Emperor Rudolf, the Duke of Bavaria, the Archdukes Ferdinand and Charles, and all the Princes of the Empire.[655] A long wrangle ensued, which ended in a declaration on the King's part that he would consent to Tortona being retained by the Duchess for her life, and afterwards held by her son-in-law and daughter, the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick.

Dorothea and her husband were, in fact, the only members of Christina's family for whom Philip showed any regard. In 1578 Duke Eric was summoned to Spain to join in the contemplated invasion of Portugal, and served in the campaign led by Alva two years later. Dorothea accompanied her husband, and spent most of her time at Court. The King evidently liked her, and when, after the successful termination of the war, the Duke and Duchess came to take leave of him at Madrid, Granvelle was desired to draw up a secret convention by which Tortona and the revenues were assigned to Eric in lieu of the yearly pension allowed him. But Dorothea was not to be outwitted by the Cardinal. She insisted, on the arrears due to her husband being paid in full, and Philip himself told Granvelle to see that two or three thousand crowns of the Duke's salary were given to the Duchess, since she was short of money, and this seemed to him only reasonable. He also gave Dorothea two fine horses, which she wished to send to her brother-in-law, the Duke of Bavaria, and granted her a patent for working certain gold-mines, which the Cardinal promised to forward either to her mother at Tortona, or else to the care of the Prince of Orange in Germany.[656] This last direction sounds strange, considering that the famous ban against the Prince, setting a price of 30,000 crowns on his head, had already been issued at Granvelle's suggestion.[657]

The Duke and Duchess now returned to Göttingen, after visiting Christina at Tortona, and remained in their own dominions for the next few years, among their long-neglected subjects. But Eric soon became restless, and in April, 1582, Dorothea wrote to beg Granvelle's help in obtaining the Viceroyalty of Milan or Naples for her husband. The Cardinal promised to do his best, and two years later actually recommended the Duke for the Viceroyalty of Sicily. But a few weeks afterwards, on the 15th of December, 1584, Eric of Brunswick died at Pavia, and was buried in the crypt of Bramante's church of S. Maria Canepanova, where his tomb is still to be seen.[658] The Duke's death released Philip from his promise regarding the succession of Tortona. But he had already taken the law into his own hands.

In June, 1584, when Christina and her ladies were enjoying the delights of the Marchese Stampa's beautiful villa at Montecastello, the Viceroy suddenly appeared on the scene, and presented her with two letters from His Catholic Majesty. These were to inform her that, after long and mature deliberation, the King and his Council had come to the conclusion that her rights to the sovereignty of Tortona were extinct, and reverted to him as Duke of Milan. But since Madame de Lorraine was closely bound to him by ties of blood, and still more by the singular affection which he had always borne her, His Majesty was pleased to allow her to retain the enjoyment of Tortona and its revenues for the remainder of her life, which he hoped would be long and prosperous. In vain Christina protested that her dowry had never been paid, and that this city was granted to her in its stead by the terms of her marriage contract. The Viceroy replied in the most courteous language that Madame was no doubt right, but that this was not his affair, and he could only recommend that on this point her claims should be referred to the Treasury.[659] He then proceeded to take possession of Tortona in the King's name, and hoisted the Spanish standard on the citadel and the Duchess's palace. Christina could only bow to superior force, but she forwarded a protest to the Catholic King and his Council, both of whom refused to receive it, on the flimsy pretext that the writer assumed the title of Queen of Denmark, which they could not recognize. Certainly, as Brantôme remarked, and as Polweiler and Silliers often complained, Philip showed his great affection for his cousin in a strange manner.[660]

Before the Duchess left Montecastello, she received the news of the Prince of Orange's assassination at Delft on the 10th of July, 1584. The hero and patriot had fallen a victim to the plots of Philip and Granvelle, and had paid the price with his life. Three years afterwards Christina shared in the thrill of horror that ran through Europe when Mary, Queen of Scots, died on the scaffold. In that hour she could only be thankful that the good old Duchess Antoinette was spared this terrible blow, and had died four years before, at the advanced age of eighty-nine. To the last Antoinette kept up friendly relations with her niece, and in a letter written with her own hand in November, 1575, the venerable lady expressed her sincere regret that owing to her great age she was unable to welcome Christina in person on her return to Nancy, but that in the spring she quite hoped to come and see her once more before she died.[661]

In 1586 Christina's old rival, Margaret of Parma, and this Princess's stanch supporter, Cardinal Granvelle, both died. Friends and foes were falling all around, and young and old alike were passing out of sight. But the Duchess still enjoyed fair health and was so happy at Tortona that she often said she never wished to leave home. As a rule, however, she spent the summer months at the Rocca di Sparaviera, in the mountains of Monferrato, "more," writes the chronicler, "to please others than herself."[662] Each year she obtained permission from the Viceroy to send 250 sacks of wheat, free of duty, for the use of her household to the Rocca, and her maggiordomo went beforehand to prepare the rooms for her arrival.[663] The presence of the Duchess Dorothea, who joined her mother at Tortona after the Duke of Brunswick's death, was a great solace in these last years, and consoled Christina for many losses and sorrows.

Meanwhile the war of the League had broken out in France, and the three Henries were contending for the mastery. Since Henry III. was childless, Catherine now tried to put forward the claims of a fourth Henry, the eldest son of her daughter Claude and the Duke of Lorraine, and a party in France maintained his claims to be at least as valid as those which Philip II. advanced in virtue of his wife Elizabeth. Christina's heart was moved at the thought of her grandson succeeding to the throne of France, and in 1587 she sent a Lorraine gentleman, De Villers, to Rome to beg the Pope for his support in this holy cause. The Pope, however, merely replied that he advised the Duke to live at peace with his neighbours. The Duchess, nothing daunted, sent De Villers to Nancy with letters bidding her son be of good cheer and persevere in his great enterprise. Unfortunately, the messenger fell into the hands of Huguenot soldiers, who took him into the King of Navarre's camp. All that could be found on him was an almost illegible letter from Her Highness the Duke's mother, containing these words:

The Béarnais smiled as he read this characteristic effusion, and bade his soldiers let the man go free. Charles, on his part, expressed considerable annoyance at his mother's intervention, which only aroused the suspicions of King Henry III., and made him look coldly on his brother-in-law. The Duchess's last illusion, however, was soon dispelled, and after the murder of the Guise brothers at Blois, and the assassination of the last Valois, Henry of Navarre was recognized as King by the greater part of France.

Christina did not live to see the end of the civil war, and the union of Henri Quatre's sister with her own grandson. But the last year of her life was cheered by the marriage of her granddaughter Christina with the Grand-Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany. Several alliances had been proposed for this Princess since she had gone to live at the French Court with her grandmother. Catherine was very anxious to marry her to Charles Emanuel, who in 1580 succeeded his father as Duke of Savoy; but Spanish influences prevailed, and the young Prince took the Infanta Catherine for his wife.[665] In 1583 the Queen-mother planned another marriage for her granddaughter, with her youngest son, the Duke of Alençon, who had left the Netherlands and lost all hope of winning Queen Elizabeth's hand; but, fortunately for Christina, the death of this worthless Prince in the following June put an end to the scheme.[666] When, in October, 1586, the King of Navarre divorced his wife Margot, Catherine proposed that her son-in-law should marry her granddaughter; but this plan fell through, as Henry refused to abjure the Huguenot religion. On the death of the Grand-Duke Francis in 1587, his brother Ferdinand exchanged a Cardinal's hat for the ducal crown, and made proposals of marriage to the Princess of Lorraine. Catherine was overjoyed at the thought of her beloved Christina reigning in Florence, the home of her ancestors, and promised her granddaughter a dowry of 600,000 crowns, with all her rights on the Medici estates in Florence, including the palace of the Via Larga. Orazio Rucellai was sent to France to draw up the contract, which Bassompierre signed on the Duke of Lorraine's part, on the 20th of October, 1588.[667] But the state of the country was so unsettled that the Queen would not allow her granddaughter to travel, and the fleet which sailed to fetch the bride was detained for months in the port of Marseilles. The murder of the Duke of Guise at Blois in December threw the whole Court into confusion, and a fortnight later Catherine herself died, on the 5th of January, 1589. It was not till the 25th of February that the marriage was finally celebrated at Blois. In March the bride set out on her journey, attended by a brilliant company of French and Florentine courtiers. Dorothea of Brunswick came to meet her niece at Lyons, and accompanied her to Marseilles, where Don Pietro de' Medici awaited her with his Tuscan galleys, and on the 23rd of April Christina at length landed at Leghorn. Ferdinand met his bride at the villa of Poggio a Caiano, and conducted her in triumph to Florence.[668] When the prolonged festivities were over, Monsieur de Lenoncourt, whom Charles of Lorraine had sent to escort his daughter to Florence, went on, by his master's orders, to Tortona, "to kiss the hands of the Duke's mother, the Queen of Denmark, and receive her commands."[669]

Unlike her mother and grandmother, the Grand-Duchess Christina enjoyed a long and prosperous married life, and after her husband's death was Regent during the minority of both her son and grandson. There is an interesting triptych in the Prado at Madrid, with portraits of the bride, her mother and grandmother, painted by some Burgundian artist at the time of the wedding. The young Grand-Duchess, a tall, handsome girl of four-and-twenty, wears a high lace ruff, with ropes of pearls round her neck and a jewelled girdle at her waist. She carries a fan in her hand, and the Medici palle are emblazoned on her shield with the lilies of France and the eagles of Lorraine. Her mother, the shortlived Duchess Claude, bears a marked resemblance to Catherine de' Medici, but is smaller and slighter in build, and altogether of a gentler and feebler type. She too holds a fan, and wears a gown of rich brocade with bodice and sleeves thickly sown with pearls. Christina, on the contrary, is clad in mourning robes, and her white frilled cap and veil and plain cambric ruff are without a single jewel. But the fine features and noble presence reveal her high lineage. Instead of a fan, she holds a parchment deed in her hand, and on her shield the arms of Austria and Denmark are quartered with those of Milan and Lorraine, while above we read the proud list of her titles—Queen of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Duchess of Milan, Lorraine, Bar, and Calabria, and Lady of Tortona.

This was the last portrait of Christina that was ever painted. In the following summer she went as usual to the Rocca of Sparaviera with her daughter Dorothea, to spend the hot days of August in the hills. But she had not been there long before she fell dangerously ill. In her anxiety to return home, she took boat and travelled by water as far as Alessandria. There she became too ill to go any farther, and died on the 10th of August, 1590, in the house of her friend Maddalena Guasco.[670]

The Duchess's corpse was borne by night to Tortona, where a funeral service was held in the new Duomo, after which the body was embalmed and taken by her daughter Dorothea to Nancy. The news was sent to King Philip in Spain, and he and his greedy Ministers lost no time in laying hands on her city and revenues. "We are informed," wrote the Viceroy to the President of the Senate, two days after Christina's death, "that Her Most Serene Highness Madame de Lorraine has passed to a better life, and accordingly we claim the pension of 4,000 crowns assigned to Her late Highness, on the quarter of the Castello, and enclose a list of the revenues of Tortona, which now revert to the Duchy of Milan."[671]

III.

The good citizens of Tortona were sorely distressed when they learnt that the remains of their beloved liege Lady were not to rest among them. But Christina's heart was in Lorraine, and her children laid her body in the crypt of the Cordeliers' church, in the grave of the husband whom she had loved so faithfully and so long. Twenty-one years later her ashes were removed with those of Duke Francis and his parents, Antoine and Renée, to the sumptuous chapel begun by her son Charles in 1607, and completed by his successors. The Rotonde, as it was called in Lorraine, was built on the model of the Cappella dei Principi, which the Duke's son-in-law, Ferdinand de' Medici, had lately reared in Florence, and was dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto. It was the work of a Tuscan architect, Gianbattista Stabili, and of Jean Ligier Richier, the son of the famous Lorraine sculptor, and was lined throughout with rich marbles and adorned with a mass of carving.[672] The cupola was added in 1632 by Simon Drouin, and the internal decorations were only completed in 1743, by order of the husband of Maria Theresa, afterwards the Emperor Francis I. By this Prince's pious care Latin inscriptions were placed over each sarcophagus, and the following words were carved on the tomb of Christina and her husband:

Christina's son, Charles III., died, after a long and prosperous reign, on the 14th of May, 1608, and was tenderly nursed during his last illness by his youngest daughter, Catherine, and his sister Dorothea. After her mother's death, the Duchess of Brunswick never left Lorraine again, and became the wife of a Burgundian noble, Marc de Rye, Marquis of Varembon.[674] She only survived her brother four years, and was buried in the Jesuit church of St. Stanilas at Nancy. Her remains and the heart of Duke Charles, which had been interred in the same chapel, were removed to the ducal mausoleum in 1772, when some fresh improvements were made in the Rotonde, by order of Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the last Duke of Lorraine and of the Empress Maria Theresa.[675] At the Revolution, in 1793, these tombs were destroyed and their contents rifled by the mob, and the ashes of the dead Princes were flung into a common grave. In 1818 they were replaced in their original tombs, the sarcophagi were restored, and the old inscriptions once more carved in the marble.

Charles III.'s second daughter, Elizabeth, married her first cousin, Maximilian, who succeeded his father in 1598, as Duke of Bavaria, and played a memorable part in the Thirty Years' War. Her next sister, Antoinette, became Duchess of Cleves, while Catherine, the youngest and most interesting of the whole family, took the veil after her father's death. This beautiful and accomplished Princess refused all the suitors who sought her hand, among them the scholar-Emperor, Rudolf II., who found in her a kindred spirit. A mystic by nature, Catherine assumed the grey Capucin habit while she lived at her father's Court, and, after he died, founded a Capucin convent in Nancy. The Pope appointed her Abbess of Remiremont, a Benedictine community of high-born ladies, which she endeavoured to reform. She was much attached to her aunt Dorothea, and after her death spent most of her time at the Court of France with her niece Margaret, the wife of Gaston, Duke of Orleans. Catherine took an active part in French politics in the stormy days of Louis XIII., and died in Paris in 1648, at the age of seventy-five.[676]

The seventeenth century witnessed the gradual dismemberment of the duchy of Lorraine, and in Richelieu's days Nancy was again occupied by French invaders. At length, in 1736, the last Duke, Francis III., was compelled to surrender Lorraine in exchange for the grand-duchy of Tuscany, on his marriage with Maria Theresa, the only child of the Emperor Charles VI. From that time Lorraine ceased to exist as an independent State, and became a province of France, while the ex-King Stanislas of Poland fixed his residence at Nancy and transformed the ancient capital into a modern city. By this marriage the House of Lorraine became merged in the imperial line of Habsburg, and the blood of King René still flows in the veins of the Austrian Emperor and of the royal families of Savoy and Spain.

Christina would have rejoiced to know that this union—a love-match like her own—was followed shortly by the elevation of Maria Theresa's husband to the imperial throne, and that by this means the House of Habsburg was raised to a height of power and splendour which it had never attained since the days of Charles V. For although she married twice into princely houses, and was much attached both to Milan and Lorraine, Christina was before all else a Habsburg, and the glory and welfare of the imperial race remained throughout her life the first object of her thoughts. Like Mary of Hungary and Eleanor of France, she grew up in absolute obedience to the Emperor's will, and wherever she went in after-years his word was still her law. In the darkest hours of her life, when she lost son and State at one blow, it was her greatest sorrow to feel that she could no longer be of service to the Emperor and his house. After the abdication of Charles V., this love and loyalty were transferred to Philip II., and her one fear was lest her son should be drawn into the opposite camp, and become French in his sympathies. And to the end she was always quick to obey the call of blood and respond to any appeal from a member of the House of Austria.

This strong family affection gave an added bitterness to the neglect and injustice which she suffered at Philip's hands during the last thirty years of her existence. One reason for his persistently harsh usage was, there can be no doubt, that Christina represented the national feeling and aspirations after freedom, which Philip and his ministers, Alva and Granvelle, did all in their power to crush. Both in the Netherlands, where the popularity of the great Emperor's niece made her dangerous in their eyes, and in Lombardy, where she filled an important position as Lady of Tortona, she came into collision with the same all-reaching arm. To the last she strove valiantly to resist the tyranny of Spanish officials and to protect her subjects from the rapacity of foreign soldiers, and a century after her death the citizens of Tortona still cherished the memory of the noble lady who, as long as she lived, had preserved them from the yoke of Spain.

Christina's lot was cast in troubled times, when crime and bloodshed were rife, and religious convictions only served to heighten the violence of men's passions; but her name shines pure and unsullied on these dark pages of history. She was naturally hasty and impulsive, she made some mistakes and met with many failures, but she was always generous and high-minded, faithful and affectionate to her friends, and full of ardent charity for the poor and downtrodden. Above all, her unceasing labours in the cause of peace justly earned the gratitude of her contemporaries, and deserve to be remembered by posterity.

At the close of this long and eventful life we turn back once more to Holbein's portrait of the youthful Duchess. As we look at the grave eyes and innocent face, we ask ourselves what was the secret of this woman's power, of the strange fascination which she possessed for men and leaders of men. What made heroes like René of Orange, and daredevils like Albert of Brandenburg, count the world well lost for love of her? Why were brave captains and brilliant courtiers—Stampa, Vendôme, De Courrières, Polweiler, Adolf of Holstein—all of them her willing slaves from the moment that they saw her face and heard the sound of her voice? What drew thoughtful men like William of Orange and Emanuel Philibert into the circle of her intimate friends, and brought even the cold-hearted Philip under her spell? It was hardly her beauty, for she had many rivals, or her superior intellect and exalted birth. Rather was it the rare and indefinable quality that we call charm, the sweet womanliness of nature, the gentle sympathy and quick response of heart and eye, ready at any moment to listen and to help, to comfort and to cheer. This, if we mistake not, was the secret of Christina's wonderful influence, of the attraction which she possessed for men and women alike, an attraction which outlived the days of youth and endured to the last hour of her life. Ever loving, she was therefore ever beloved.