SUCH was Elizabeth when, at the age of twenty-two, she first made acquaintance with Rene Descartes, who in the year 164o was introduced at the court of the Queen of Bohemia, and who in the following year took up his abode at the village of Eyndegeest, not far from the Hague. Eyndegeest was also within easy distance of Utrecht.
" Here," writes a French philosopher who visited him, "I found him in a little château in a very beautiful situation, with a tolerably pretty garden, trees in the background, and meadows all round, across which one could see church spires of various heights rising in the distance, till they were lost like points on the horizon. From this place Descartes could go in a boat in the course of the day to Utrecht, Delft, Rotterdam, Haarlem, and sometimes even to Amsterdam. He could spend a half day at the Hague, returning at night; and this drive or walk was one of the finest in the world—through meadows and past country houses, then through a wide forest that reaches to the Hague, a town worthy of comparison with the most beautiful cities of Europe. The Court of the Queen of Bohemia seemed to be that of the graces. All the beau monde of the Hague frequented it, to offer their homage to the wit and virtue and beauty of the four princesses."
He further relates that these lovely princesses were in the habit of making water parties, dressed as peasants, and talking freely to every one on board the packet-boats in which they made their expeditions, on which occasions they had many adventures and much amusement. "But Elizabeth, the eldest princess, was only occasionally of the party. She was deep in her books, studying Descartes, and sitting up late at night to read philosophy."
For Elizabeth was still seeking the clue to the labyrinth of life. She had no day to remember like little Anna's day at the brookside, when Christ had knocked at the door of her heart, and had given to her the living water.
Descartes, on the other hand, was flattered and delighted by the devotion of his new pupil. He dedicated to her his great book on the principles of philosophy. He corresponded with her regularly. He said that she understood his reasoning more clearly and accurately than anyone he had found, even amongst learned men.
One day he paid a visit to Utrecht, and called upon Anna von Schurmann. He found her studying the Bible in Hebrew.
He told her he was astonished to find a person with such a mind wasting her time over a study of so little importance.
Anna replied, the study of the Hebrew Bible was of the greatest importance to her, for by this means she could learn more clearly the mind of God.
Descartes answered that he too had once had similar ideas, and for that reason had begun to learn the languages that were called sacred, and that he had begun to read the first chapter of Genesis, which describes the creation. But he had only puzzled his head over it. He could learn nothing clear and definite, and he never could make out what Moses meant ; and he found that, instead of having lighted a candle to clear up his mind, he had only got into hopeless confusion, and had therefore had enough of such studies to last him for the rest of his life.
Anna looked at Descartes with a stern pity. She resolved that she would never more be in his company.
A memorandum of that day stands in her journal, headed, "The Lord's benefits. God turned away my heart from that profane man, and used him as a goad to stir me up to piety, and to make me give myself up more wholly to Himself."
From this moment Elizabeth's friendship for Anna cooled down. The girls saw one another but seldom, and their letters, once so frequent, became few and far between. At last, in the year when Descartes, having removed from Eyndegeest, dedicated his book to Elizabeth, she received a faithful warning from her friend Anna, but received it in vain.
The letters written to her by Descartes pleased her better, and she still remained working out the problems which he gave her, and endeavouring to make sure of her own existence in the first place, of the existence of God in the second, and to satisfy the hunger of her soul by searching in her own mind for the explanation of all the mysteries of her sad life. Yet Sophie, who watched her carefully, could not observe that her philosophy gave her any consolation on the frosty days which nipped her nose.
Still less did it console her in the sorrows and troubles which followed. Two years after Descartes had left Eyndegeest, Elizabeth's brother Edward became a Roman Catholic. This was a great shock to her Protestant feelings. The following year, her brother Philip, having assassinated a French favourite of his mother's, had to fly for his life. Elizabeth, who undertook to defend him to her mother, now fell far below the dogs and monkeys in the estimation of the queen. She left home for a time to visit her good Aunt Charlotte, her father's sister, with whom she and her grandmother had spent some of their years of wandering when Elizabeth was a child.
Aunt Charlotte's son, Frederick William, who had studied at Leyden, and spent much time with his aunt and cousins at the Hague, was now, since the death of his father, Elector of Brandenburg, afterwards to be known as the Great Elector.
Elizabeth was recalled to the Hague by a terrible family sorrow, the death of her uncle, Charles I. of England. The shock caused her a severe illness, and she received from Descartes all the consolation he was capable of giving her.
He felt sure, he wrote, that she would rise above circumstances, "being well accustomed to the unkindness of destiny."
" If this violent death of the King of England," he writes further, "appears to have something more horrible in its details than those which await us in our beds, yet, looking at it rightly, it is more honourable and happy and gentle. So that the very circumstances of such a death, which to common men and women would appear so grievous, must be to your Highness a ground of consolation. For it is a great honour to die a death which must awaken the pity and lamentation and praise of all people who have feeling hearts. During the last hours of his life, the king must have more completely atoned to his conscience, for the indignation which was the only unfortunate passion that could be remarked in him, than have permitted himself to be carried away by it. As to the suffering, it is not to be compared, on account of its short duration, with fever or sickness. Also it is much better to be entirely freed from false hopes, than to be left to indulge in them."
" It must be owned," writes Elizabeth's biographer, " that it needed a great soul to find any rest or comfort in these frosty consolations, in which reason alone speaks, and commands the feelings to be silent."
In the same year Descartes went to take up his abode in Stockholm, at the invitation of Queen Christina, and Elizabeth returned to the court of her cousin, the Great Elector, at Berlin. Descartes died in the following year, and left Elizabeth to work out her problems as best she could.
Meanwhile her life became to her more sorrowful and mysterious as time went on. Her beautiful sister Henrietta married and died within a year. Philip too was killed, and Maurice, the sailor-brother, disappeared from the shores of the West Indies, and was heard of no more.
In the year 165o Elizabeth was invited to Heidelburg by her brother, Charles Louis, on the occasion of his marriage with the Princess Charlotte of Hesse. After the Thirty Years' War he had been restored to his domains on the Rhine. Sophia was already there, and had asked her brother to invite Elizabeth to enliven her dull life at the castle.
" But Elizabeth," she says, " arrived much changed in mind and person." The Electress, wife of Charles Louis, thought her decidedly disagreeable. Her brother, Prince Edward, who was also at Heidelberg, said, " Where has her liveliness gone ? What has she done with all her merry talk ?"
Sophia too took up arms against her sister, "because," as she said, "Elizabeth took upon herself to assert her authority over me as if I was a child."
And meanwhile Louise, the artist princess, who had been left behind with her mother at the Hague, ran away, and became a nun. No children now of all the thirteen were left at home.
The life at Heidelberg was, as may be supposed, a time of many sorrows to Elizabeth. The cold, proud Electress disliked her. Sophia was in open rebellion against her elder sister; and the profligate life of Charles Louis was a grief to her, for which she could find no comfort in the philosophy of Descartes.
Yet, as a solace to her many troubles, Elizabeth betook herself the more energetically to the study of the writings of her beloved teacher. Her free-thinking brother, Charles Louis, who had bestirred himself to restore the University of Heidelberg, demolished during the Thirty Years' War, desired to enlighten the students by lectures on Cartesian philosophy. The lecturer, an old friend of Descartes, was gladly welcomed by Elizabeth. She even supplemented his lectures by private readings with the students, as the letters written to her by Descartes served to explain difficulties in the lectures of the professor. These classes, conducted by Elizabeth, were well attended by the students, and Elizabeth obtained a name for learning to which no other princess has an equal claim.
As time went on, Charles Louis, who had for a long while disliked his wife, determined to marry one of her ladies, Louise von Degenfeldt. In those days, when vices of all sorts were regarded as a matter of course, the conduct of Charles Louis was defended and excused, as being no worse than that of other princes.
The constant quarrels of the Elector and his wife now sometimes ended in blows. The Electress, who after a while had attached herself warmly to Elizabeth, confided to her all her sorrows and insults. In the year 165S, eight years after the marriage of Charles Louis to Charlotte of Hesse, he desired the Electress to consider herself his wife no longer, and shamelessly married Louise von Degenfeldt.
Strange to say, the Electress Charlotte not only remained in his castle of Heidelberg up to that moment, but consented to remain there afterwards. Half of the apartments in the castle were allotted to her, and her three little children. Elizabeth remained there also.