During the government of King Charles not only the political and commercial life of the country was renewed, but he had regarded it as his duty to save the treasures of art and the ancient buildings of the country from destruction. One of the finest monuments of the Middle Ages, and a marvel of classical Byzantine, architecture, is the Cathedral of Curtea de Arges. Through the influence of the weather, fire, and neglect it had fallen into decay. King Charles sent for the famous Lecomte de Nouy, a scholar of Viollet-le-Duc, to Roumania, in order to restore the church according to the intentions of its founder, as gloriously as it stood nearly four hundred years ago. On the 5th of March 1886 Queen Elizabeth writes to her mother:--“I have undertaken a great work for the Church of Curtea de Arges. I am inscribing the gospels on enormous sheets of vellum, from which they are then to be read every Thursday as a recollection of that Thursday on which I heard them read beside the coffin of my child. It will be a fine work, and I shall write this book with my own hands, so that it will be the best monument to little Marie. I will paint a dedication for its consecration according to the customs of the Middle Ages. “The binding will be executed by Telge in Berlin in cloisonnet after my designs. I have just painted a background with a scarlet border. Gold letters with red in them are to appear on this blue background, and on the scarlet edge Moorish ornaments in gold with blue. You can imagine how rich this will be. “On the first page are four episodes in the life of Marie, and four from the Passion of Christ, on which the words ‘Betrayed’ might stand: ‘Gethsemane, the Kiss of Judas, the Betrayal, and the Purple Robe.’ In the middle is the Resurrection, that is the Noli me tangere of Fiesole, Christ and the Magdalene. On the other side of the page is my dedication surrounded by angels’ heads. In the midst my child’s portrait. She is represented as tolling the Easter bell. To the left Otto; to the right Hermann, Marie, and Franzi; in the middle below Stéphanie; on the right Marie Bibra; to the left Marie Sulzer. Their names and the dates of their death are inscribed at the side. “The dedication is as follows:-- ‘I have made this book of the Twelve[4] Gospels of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus for the Holy Church and Episcopacy of Curtea de Arges, and consecrated it to God as a monument to my only and deeply loved child Marie, who passed to life eternal on Thursday in Holy Week, and at whose deathbed I then heard the consoling words of God. [4] In the Greek Churches of Roumania the Passion of our Lord is read every Maunday Thursday. It is there called the twelve gospels, as the words of the four evangelists are interrupted twelve times with song and prayer. ‘CASTLE PELESCH, _27th Aug.-8th Sept. 1886_.’