Leopold, the widowed emperor of Germany, sent a magnificent retinue to the palace of the grand elector, and solicited Eleonora for his bride. It was the most brilliant match Europe could furnish; but Eleonora, notwithstanding all the importunities of her parents, rejected the proffered crown.
As the emperor urged his plea, the conscientious maiden, that she might render herself personally unattractive to him, neglected her dress, and exposed herself, unbonneted, to the sun and wind. She thus succeeded in repelling his suit; and the emperor married Claudia of Tyrol.
The elector palatine was one of the most powerful of the minor princes of Europe; and his court, in gayety and splendor, rivalled even that of the emperor. Eleonora was compelled to be a prominent actor in the gorgeous saloons of her father’s palace, and to mingle with the festive throng in all their pageants of pleasure.
But her heart was elsewhere. Several hours every day were devoted to prayer and religious reading. She kept a minute journal, in which she scrupulously recorded and condemned her failings. She visited the sick in lowly cottages, and with her own hands performed the most self-denying duties required at the bedside of pain and death.
After the lapse of three years, Claudia died; and again the widowed emperor sought the hand of Eleonora. Her spiritual advisers now urged that it was her duty to accept the imperial alliance, since upon the throne she could render herself so useful in extending the influence of the Church. Promptly she yielded to the voice of duty, and, charioted in splendor, was conveyed a bride to Vienna.
But her Christian character remained unchanged. She carried the penance and self-sacrifice of the cloister into the voluptuousness of the palace. The imperial table was loaded with every luxury; but Eleonora, the empress, drank only cold water, and ate of fare as humble as could be found in any peasant’s hut. On occasions of state, it was needful that she should be dressed in embroidered robes of purple and gold; but, to prevent any possibility of the risings of pride, her dress and jewelry were so arranged with sharp brass pricking the flesh, that she was kept in a state of constant discomfort. Thus she endeavored, while discharging with the utmost fidelity the duties of a wife and an empress, to be ever reminded that life is but probation.
These mistaken austerities, caused by the darkness of the age, only show how sincere was her consecration to God. When Eleonora attended the opera with the emperor, she took with her the Psalms of David, bound to represent the books of the performance, and thus unostentatiously endeavored to shield her mind from the profane and indelicate allusions with which the operas of those days were filled, and from which, as yet, they are by no means purified.
She translated the Psalms and several other devotional books into German verse for the benefit of her subjects. She was often seen, with packages of garments and baskets of food, entering the cottages of the poor peasantry around her country palace, ministering like an angel of mercy to all their wants.
At length her husband, the emperor, was taken sick. Eleonora watched at his pillow with all the assiduity of a Sister of Charity: she hardly abandoned her post for a moment, by day or by night, until, with her own hands, she closed his eyes as he slept in death.
Eleonora survived her husband fifteen years, devoting herself through all this period to the instruction of the ignorant, to nursing the sick, to feeding and clothing the poor. All possible luxury she discarded, and endeavored as closely as possible to imitate her Saviour, who had not where to lay his head.