Margaret's correspondents included most of the sovereigns of Europe and their various ambassadors. Besides the personages already mentioned, we come across the names of Raulin, Carondelet, Alberto Pio, the Cardinal of Gurk, Caulier, and Laurent de Gorrevod, to whose conferences and intrigues we are introduced, and sometimes to the snares they laid for their best friends. Amongst them we find André de Burgo, Maximilian's 'faithful councillor' and ambassador in France, whose despatches to Malines are masterpieces of finesse and diplomacy. The pages in which he describes the events of which Julius II. is the hero are full of interest. In a witty and delightful manner he records the ambitions, cabals, and various factions which hastened the end of this warrior pontiff who was 'always dying but never buried.' He frequently announces that the Holy Father is the victim of a violent fever, and that the doctors hardly hope to save him--it is whispered that he will be 'in paradise before a year and a half is out.' The Cardinals prepare to 'choose a good and holy Pope,' but before they can do so, the dying Pope recovers, or at least he is 'so much better that he thinks himself cured and has lost his fever.' Then there is André de Burgo's successor, Chancellor Perrenot, the father of Cardinal de Granvelle. Also the Granvelles' enemy, Mercurin de Gattinare, a skilled diplomatist and picturesque writer. More than once we read of his reminding Margaret of the respect she owes him, and he tells her, not without pride, that she does not deserve to have a servant like himself, and when she gave him some unmerited rebuke, he replied: 'These words should be addressed to a stranger and an unknown man, not to me, whom you have known and tried.' In Margaret's time Malines was a flourishing commercial city, whose manufactures were exported to all parts of Europe. Commerce, industries, and navigation had made great progress under her wise rule. Her palace was the centre of life in the old city and the meeting-place of many illustrious families and learned men who came from all parts of the Netherlands to visit her Court. Jean Second, Erasmus, Cornelius Agrippa, Jean Lemaire, Mabuse, Coxcie, and Van Orley were amongst her frequent guests. One of her chief ladies was the Countess of Hochstrate, who had charge of her maids of honour and the women of her household. Her husband, Count Hochstrate, was the princess's chevalier d'honneur, and commanded her bodyguard of twenty-seven noblemen, whose duty it was to attend her wherever she went. He also was in charge of the stewards, cooks, pastrycooks, bakers, cupbearers, carvers and the other servants, besides the keeper of Prince Charles's lions and rare birds, so that his post was no sinecure.