Bartholomew, which he planned at the instigation of his fiend-like
mother. A few wretched years the youthful queen lived with the monster,
when his death released her from that bondage. She then returned to
Vienna, a young and childless widow, but twenty years of age. She built
and endowed the splendid monastery of St. Mary de Angelis, and having
seen enough of the pomp of the world, shut herself up from the world in
the imprisonment of its cloisters, where she recounted her beads for
nineteen years, until she died in 1592.
Margaret, the youngest daughter, after her father's death, accompanied
her mother to Spain. Her sister Anne soon after died, and Philip II.,
her morose and debauched husband, having already buried four wives, and
no one can tell how many guilty favorites, sought the hand of his young
and fresh niece. But Margaret wisely preferred the gloom of the cloister
to the Babylonish glare of the palace. She rejected the polluted and
withered hand, and in solitude and silence, as a hooded nun, she
remained immured in her cell for fifty-seven years. Then her pure spirit
passed from a joyless life on earth, we trust, to a happy home in
heaven.
Rhodolph, the eldest son, succeeded his father, and in the subsequent
pages we shall record his career.
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