six months after Dadizeele’s death, Marie went out by the Porte des Maréchaux to hunt in the forest of Winendael, preceded by bands of music, joyous, radiant, in festive attire. In the evening they carried her home on a litter, pale, insensible, half dead. Her steed had suddenly reared, overbalanced himself, and rolled on her. Marie was expecting the hour of her delivery. From the first there was no hope of saving her life. She lingered on for three weeks, and on the 27th of March, 1482, passed quietly away.
Though the greater part of the stately Princenhof has been pulled down, and the fragment which still remains has been irreparably disfigured and spoiled, at least so far as the exterior is concerned, by stucco and plaster, and the addition of three new storeys, the room in which Marie died is still standing, and has been little changed, so it is said, since the days when that hapless princess occupied it. It is an oblong-shaped, comfortable-looking apartment of not very large dimensions, with a beautiful panelled ceiling moulded all over with flowers and foliage, and it gives on a pleasant garden.
The fair young Duchess was laid to rest in the Church of Notre Dame, and if her wraith is not among the many ghosts who wander about that mysterious fane, the memory of her beauty and her gentleness still lingers there, kept green by the cunning workmanship of Pierre de Becker, erst artist, sculptor, setter of gems, and skilled craftsman in metal work at Brussels. This man conceived, and with his own hands carried out, patiently toiling at it for seven years, from 1495 to 1502, and thereby expending health, strength, fortune, and receiving in return no adequate reward, a masterpiece the like of which is rarely seen. An altar tomb of black marble, enriched with statues of saints and angels of the most delicate workmanship, and with creeping plants and scrolls and heraldic shields in bronze and gold and enamel, which now stands in a side chapel off the southern ambulatory of Notre Dame. On it reposes the form of a beautiful girl with her crowned head resting on a cushion and at her feet two hounds. A quaint epitaph in old French proclaims her name and rank, and begs also those who read it not to forget her soul.
Sepulcre de très Illustre princesse dame Marie de Bourgoigne.... Laquelle dame trèspassa de ce siecle. En l’age de vintcinq ans le 28e jour de mars, l’an 1482.... Regrettee plainte et ploree fut de ses subjets et de tous autres qui la cognoissoient. Autant que fut onques princesse. Priez Dieu pour son ame. Amen.
But what of her once beautiful body? All that remains of it lies in a vault beneath the choir, and here too are the bones of the Terrible Duke and the dried-up heart of the son who erected to the memory of his mother the glorious monument described above. They are all scattered about pell-mell amongst the débris of the casket and the coffins which once contained them. Thus: until the spring of 1796, the monument of Marie of Burgundy, as well as the monument of her father, stood side by side in the chancel of Notre Dame just over the vault which still contains their ashes. At this time the French Revolutionists were playing havoc with the churches of Bruges, and in order to preserve these treasures from their fury, Peter de Zitter, who was then parish beadle, with the assistance of Stephen of Sierzac, a stone mason, dismounted them and secretly carried away the fragments to a house hard by the church. The Republicans, thus baulked of a rich booty, vented their spleen on the ducal sepulchre, broke it open, wrenched off the lids of the coffins, carried away all the iron and lead they could lay hands on, and scattered the bones of Charles and of Marie on the bare stone pavement.
Ten years after, in 1806, the monuments were brought forth from their hiding-place and erected in the chapel where they now stand.