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Rh no money from the Court, and my wife, who had for a long time been suffering from low spirits and despondency, was taken violently ill towards the end of 1610, with the Hungarian fever, epilepsy and phrenitis. She was scarcely convalescent when all my three children were at once attacked with smallpox. Leopold with his army occupied the town beyond the river just as I lost the dearest of my sons, him whose nativity you will find in my book on the new star. The town on this side of the river where I lived was harassed by the Bohemian troops, whose new levies were insubordinate and insolent; to complete the whole, the Austrian army brought the plague with them into the city. I went into Austria and endeavoured to procure the situation which I now hold. Returning in June, I found my wife in a decline from her grief at the death of her son, and on the eve of an infectious fever, and I lost her also within eleven days of my return. Then came fresh annoyance, of course, and her fortune was to be divided with my step-sisters. The Emperor Rudolph would not agree to my departure; vain hopes were given me of being paid from Saxony; my time and money were wasted together, till on the death of the Emperor in 1612, I was named again by his successor, and suffered to depart to Linz."

Being thus left a widower with a ten-year-old daughter Susanna, and a boy Louis of half her age, he looked for a second wife to take charge of them. He has given an account of eleven ladies whose suitability he considered. The first, an intimate friend of his first wife, ultimately declined; one was too old, another an invalid, another too proud of her birth and quarterings, another could do nothing useful, and so on. Number eight kept him guessing for three months, until he tired of her constant indecision, and confided his disappointment to number nine, who was not impressed. Number ten, introduced by a friend, Kepler found exceedingly ugly and