to stand on her feet. A bottle of wine, holding more than a quart, in
the morning, and another in the evening, together with a pound of sugar,
was her usual allowance. She addressed letters to Alva complaining that
her husband had impoverished himself "in his good-for-nothing Beggar
war," and begging the Duke to furnish her with a little ready money
and with the means of arriving at the possession of her dower.

An illicit connexion with a certain John Rubens, an exiled magistrate of
Antwerp, and father of the celebrated painter, completed the list of her
delinquencies, and justified the marriage of the Prince with Charlotte de
Bourbon. It was therefore determined by the Elector of Saxony and the
Landgrave William to remove her from the custody of the Nassaus. This
took place with infinite difficulty, at the close of the year 1575.
Already, in 1572; Augustus had proposed to the Landgrave that she should
be kept in solitary confinement, and that a minister should preach to her
daily through the grated aperture by which her, food was to be admitted.
The Landgrave remonstrated at so inhuman a proposition, which was,
however, carried into effect. The wretched Princess, now completely a
lunatic, was imprisoned in the electoral palace, in a chamber where the
windows were walled up and a small grating let into the upper part of the
door. Through this wicket came her food, as well as the words of the
holy man appointed to preach daily for her edification.

Two years long, she endured this terrible punishment, and died mad, on
the 18th of December, 1577. On the following day, she was buried in the
electoral tomb at Meissen; a pompous procession of "school children,
clergy, magistrates, nobility, and citizens" conducting her to that rest
of which she could no longer be deprived by the cruelty of man nor her
own violent temperament.