Maximilian’s daughter, the Archduchess Elizabeth (Isabella), had to leave her family and her country to unite her fortunes with Charles IX. of France, the unhappy king whose memory will be for ever associated with the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The position she went to occupy was as perilous as it was brilliant. Queen of France, wife of Charles IX., daughter-in-law of Catherine de Medici, with Marguerite de Valois (afterwards Queen of Henry of Navarre), for a sister-in-law, she had need of the trustiest and wisest counsellor her father could supply; and it was therefore no idle compliment to Busbecq, when he was called from the care of her brothers to take his place at the head of her household. He had, like his grandfather Gilles Ghiselin II., held the post of _écuyer trenchant_ in the imperial family. He had next been appointed governor and seneschal to the young Archdukes, and he was now sent as seneschal, or high steward, of the Archduchess’s household when she left parents and fatherland to share a foreign throne. The marriage took place by proxy, October 23, 1570, and in the following month the Archduchess set out for France under the care of her faithful seneschal. A reader of the life of Busbecq prefixed to the Elzevir edition, would be led to suppose that he remained at the head of the Queen’s household in France from that time forth. Such, however, was not the case. Various notices by his friends Lipsius,[80] the celebrated scholar, and de l’Ecluse, the botanist, prove beyond doubt that he shortly afterwards returned to Vienna. At any rate he was there in the summer of 1572 and the winter of 1573, apparently the life and soul of the literary and scientific society of the Austrian capital. Here he was able to keep up to some degree his connection with Turkey, for we find that he received parcels of tulip bulbs and other rare plants from Constantinople, of which his countryman de l’Ecluse reaped the benefit. Such a life must have been nearly as much after Busbecq’s own heart as the paradise of which he dreamed by the waters of the Lys; perhaps he thought his troubles were over, and he would be allowed to go peacefully to his grave after enriching the world with the fruits of a long course of scientific study. Such, however, was not to be the case. On May 30, 1574, Charles IX. of France ended his brief and unhappy life. The Archduchess Elizabeth was now a widow. What her position was may be gathered from the graphic touches in Busbecq’s letters; from the first it was difficult, and at last—to use her own words—it became intolerable. The Emperor, on hearing of his son-in-law’s death, immediately despatched his old friend and faithful servant to comfort his daughter, and take charge of her affairs.