Note 13 — Chapter VIII · NORTH TIROL—THE INNTHAL. INNSBRUCK.

The people, whose own experience fixes the law of suffering in their minds, will have it that these years of tranquil joy were not unalloyed; but that Philippine’s mother-in-law embittered them by her jealous bickerings and reproaches, and that these in the end led her to make a sacrifice of her life to the exigencies of her husband’s glory. The bath is yet pointed out at Ambras where she is said to have bled herself to death to make way for a consort more conformable to her husband’s birth. All, even local, historians, however, are agreed in rejecting this tradition.13 It has served nevertheless to endear her to the popular mind, for whom she is still a model of domestic virtues no less than a type of beauty. Scarcely is there a house in Tirol that is not adorned by her image. Among other traditions of her personal perfections, it is fabled that her skin was so delicate that the colour of the red wine could be seen softly opalized as it passed her slender throat.14