"I was delighted, as I always am, with your dear letter of the 20th instant, but should have been much better pleased to see you and enjoy the pleasure of your presence, as I hoped to do by this time, especially as these Signors assured me that your absence would be short. But they were, it is plain, quite wrong. However, I must be reasonable, and if your prolonged absence is necessary I will not complain. I thank you for your kind excuses and explanations, but I will not thank you for saying that I need not trouble to write to you with my own hand, because this at least is labour well spent, and I am only happy when I can talk with Your Excellency or write to you, now that I cannot enjoy your company. I commend myself infinitely to your remembrance, and trust God may long preserve you, and grant you a safe and speedy return. "Your very humble wife, "CHRISTIERNA. "From Milan, June. 1535."[111] But the warm-hearted young wife's wish remained unfulfilled, and four months after these lines were written Christina was a widow. V. [Sidenote: JAN., 1535] THE PALATINE] The chief event of Christina's brief married life was the marriage of her elder sister, the Princess of Denmark. Dorothea was by this time an attractive girl of fourteen, shorter and slighter than her sister, and inferior to her in force of character, but full of brightness and gaiety. She was very popular in her old home at Malines, and often shot with a crossbow at the meetings of the Guild of Archers. Several marriages had been proposed for her, and King James of Scotland had repeatedly asked for her hand; but the Emperor hesitated to accept his advances, from fear of offending King Francis, whose daughter Magdalen had long been pledged to this fickle monarch, while the difficulty of providing a dower and outfit for another portionless niece, made Mary reluctant to conclude a second marriage. But, a few months after Christina's marriage, a new suitor for Dorothea's hand came forward in the person of the Count Palatine, who had vainly aspired to wed both Eleanor of Austria and Mary of Hungary. Frederic's loyal support of Charles's claims to the imperial crown, and his gallant defence of Vienna against the Turks, had been scurvily rewarded, and hitherto all his attempts to find another bride had been foiled. When, in 1526, after the King of Portugal's death, he approached his old love, the widowed Queen Eleanor, his advances were coldly repelled; and when he asked King Ferdinand for one of his daughters, he was told that she was too young for him. After Mary of Hungary's refusal, he left the Imperial Court in anger, and told Charles V. that he would take a French wife;[112] but Isabel of Navarre, Margaret of Montferrat, and the King of Poland's daughter, all eluded his efforts, and when