Descendants of the Stuarts

168 THE DESCENDANTS
my daughter, and twenty to the Queen of Sicily,*
I am so tired that I can hardly set one foot before
another ;" an assertion we can readily credit.
This indefatigable princess, to whose writings
posterity is so indebted, was the only daughter of
Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, by his wife, the in-
jured Charlotte of Hesse-Cassel,and first saw the light
in her father's ancient ancestral palace of Heidelberg,
on the seventh day of July, 1652. She was baptized
according to the rites of the Protestant Church,
and received the names of Elizabeth Charlotte, the
former in compliment to her grandmother, the Queen
of Bohemia, and the latter after her mother.
We have casually noticed, in our relation of the
father of this princess, the unhappy disputes between
her parents, consequent on the Elector's undisguised
liaison with Mademoiselle de Dagenfeld, the daughter
of a Suabian officer, and one of the electress's j^//6's
cfhonneur. Whatever were the charms of the fair
commoner, and they are said to have been of a supe-
rior order, they in no wise excuse the elector's con-
temptuous treatment of his lawful wife. That the
latter was a woman of spirit there is little reason to
doubt ; but that her eccentricities, if such they may
be termed, were provoked by the ill conduct of her
spouse, is equally certain. What could be more
mortifying to the poor Electress than to find herself
supplanted in her household by one of her own
* Afterwards Queen of Sardinia, but s\ho for some years bore the title
of Queen of Sicily.