Margaret took great pride in keeping up an establishment worthy of her rank. She lived in great luxury, and her table was always furnished with the choicest wines, and every kind of fish, fowl, and game in its season. In spite of her habitual melancholy, she took part in the usual amusements of her time. We read of her attending many feasts, dances, and jousts; and it was seldom she did not have music during her meals, either fife, tambourin, or violin players, or sometimes the choristers of Notre-Dame de Sablon, or Monsieur de Ravestein's singers, who played and sang songs before her. Another day we read of her watching the performance of 'two large and powerful bears' brought by some strolling Hungarian players; or sitting in the vast hall, silent and dreamy, listening to old airs of German minstrelsy. Maximilian occasionally visited his daughter, and then Malines was _en fête_. Sometimes he invited his young granddaughters to spend a few days with him at Brussels, 'to see the park and enjoy themselves.'[42] [42] Le Glay, _Correspondance de l'Empereur Maximilian I._ But Margaret's favourite occupation was superintending the education of her nephew Charles. She had a wonderful aptitude for teaching, and was not satisfied that he should excel in manly sports, which was usually all that was required of princes, but she insisted on his studying history, languages, and science. She also found time for more domestic employments. From the letters we find that she spun flax, and amongst the objects mentioned in her inventory are a spindle, distaff, and winding reels. She was accustomed to work with her needle, and once she surprised her father by sending him 'good linen shirts,' which she had made herself, and Maximilian, delighted with this present, hastened to thank her: 'I have received by this bearer some beautiful shirts and "huves" which you have helped to make with your own hand, with which I am delighted.... Our skin will be comforted with meeting the fineness and softness of such beautiful linen, such as the angels in Paradise use for their clothing.' Margaret also sent her father receipts for various dishes which pleased her, and we find her recommending him to eat some preserves during the heat of summer which she has tried herself and found excellent. 'I have a good apothecary,' she says, 'called Countess de Horne, who takes care to supply me every year with the best preserves in the world, which she makes with her own hands, and as I find them good, it seems to me that you will also, even in this great heat.'