Remained in the chambers,
and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated
with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed
with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors.
There was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building
to make a true brick-a-bracker green with envy.
A painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate
- but then the Margravine was herself a trifle indelicate.
It is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house,
and brimful of interest as a reflection of the character
and tastes of that rude bygone time.
In the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the
Margravine's chapel, just as she left it - a coarse
wooden structure, wholly barren of ornament. It is said
that the Margravine would give herself up to debauchery
and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time,
and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend
a few months in repenting and getting ready for another
good time. She was a devoted Catholic, and was perhaps
quite a model sort of a Christian as Christians went then,
in high life.
Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the
strange den I have been speaking of, after having indulged
herself in one final, triumphant, and satisfying spree.
She shut herself up there, without company, and without
even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the world.
In her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking;
she wore a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself
with whips - these aids to grace are exhibited there yet.
She prayed and told her beads, in another little room,
before a waxen Virgin niched in a little box against the wall;
she bedded herself like a slave.
