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.