第42章 CHAPTER VIII(3)

One was the Prince of Majorca,the handsome youth we have already spoken of:he bore her off triumphant over all rivals,including the son of the King of France.James of Aragon had one of those faces of melancholy sweetness which no woman can resist.Great troubles nobly borne had thrown as it were a funereal veil over his youthful days:more than thirteen years he had spent shut in an iron cage;when by the aid of a false key he had escaped from his dreadful prison,he wandered from one court to another seeking aid;it is even said that he was reduced to the lowest degree of poverty and forced to beg his bread.The young stranger's beauty and his adventures combined had impressed both Joan and Marie at the court of Avignon.Marie especially had conceived a violent passion for him,all the more so for the efforts she made to conceal it in her own bosom.Ever since James of Aragon came to Naples,the unhappy princess,married with a dagger at her throat,had desired to purchase her liberty at the expense of crime.Followed by four armed men,she entered the prison where Robert des Baux was still suffering for a fault more his father's than his own.Marie stood before the prisoner,her arms crossed,her cheeks livid,her lips trembling.It was a terrible interview.This time it was she who threatened,the man who entreated pardon.Marie was deaf to his prayers,and the head of the luckless man fell bleeding at her feet,and her men threw the body into the sea.But God never allows a murder to go unpunished:James preferred the queen to her sister,and the widow of Charles of Durazzo gained nothing by her crime but the contempt of the man she loved,and a bitter remorse which brought her while yet young to the tomb.

Joan was married in turn to James of Aragon,son of the King of Majorca,and to Otho of Brunswick,of the imperial family of Saxony.

We will pass rapidly over these years,and come to the denouement of this history of crime and expiation.James,parted from his wife,continued his stormy career,after a long contest in Spain with Peter the Cruel,who had usurped his kingdom:about the end of the year 1375he died near Navarre.Otho also could not escape the Divine vengeance which hung over the court of Naples,but to the end he valiantly shared the queen's fortunes.Joan,since she had no lawful heir,adopted her nephew,Charles de la Paix (so called after the peace of Trevisa).He was the son of Louis Duras,who after rebelling against Louis of Tarentum,had died miserably in the castle of Ovo.The child would have shared his father's fate had not Joan interceded to spare his life,loaded him with kindness,and married him to Margaret,the daughter of her sister Marie and her cousin Charles,who was put to,death by the King of Hungary.

Serious differences arose between the queen and one of her former subjects,Bartolommeo Prigiani,who had become pope under the name of Urban VI.Annoyed by the queen's opposition,the pope one day angrily said he would shut her up in a convent.Joan,to avenge the insult,openly favoured Clement VII,the anti-pope,and offered him a home in her own castle,when,pursued by Pope Urban's army,he had taken refuge at Fondi.But the people rebelled against Clement,and killed the Archbishop of Naples,who had helped to elect him:they broke the cross that was carried in procession before the anti-pope,and hardly allowed him time to make his escape on shipboard to Provence.Urban declared that Joan was now dethroned,and released her subjects from their oath of fidelity to her,bestowing the crown of Sicily and Jerusalem upon Charles de la Paix,who marched on Naples with 8000Hungarians.Joan,who could not believe in such base ingratitude,sent out his wife Margaret to meet her adopted son,though she might have kept her as a hostage,and his two children,Ladislaus and Joan,who became later the second queen of that name.

But the victorious army soon arrived at the gates of Naples,and Charles blockaded the queen in her castle,forgetting in his ingratitude that she had saved his life and loved him like a mother.