ghth year.... Some authors say that he caused her to be
smothered, others that she was strangled; but the more probable view is
that she was beheaded, in 1382, on the 5th of May. It is said that a
Provencal astrologer, doubtless a certain Anselme who lived at that
time, and who is very famous in the history of Provence, being
questioned as to the future husband of the young princess, replied,
'Maritabitur cum ALIO.' This word is composed of the initials of the
names of her four husbands, Andrea, Louis, James, and Otto. This
princess, furthermore, was exceedingly clever, fond of the sciences and
of men of learning, of whom she had a great many at her court, liberal
and beautiful, prudent, wise, and not lacking in piety. She it is that
sold Avignon to the popes. Boccaccio, Balde, and other scholars of her
time speak of her with praise."

In offering an explanation of the great popularity enjoyed by Joanna of
Naples among the people of Provence, the poet does not hesitate to
acknowledge that along with her beauty, her personal charm, her
brilliant arrival on the gorgeous galley at the court of Clement VI,
whither she came, eloquent and proud, to exculpate herself, her long
reign and its vicissitudes, her generous efforts to reform abuses, must
be counted also the grewsome procession of her four husbands; and this
popularity, he says, is still alive, after five centuries. The poet
places her among such historic figures as Caius Marius, Ossian, King
Arthur, Count Raymond of Toulouse, the good King Rene, Anne of Brittany,
Roland, the Cid, to which the popular mind has attached heroic legends,
race traditions, and mysterious monuments. The people of Provence still
look back upon the days of their independence when she reigned, a sort
of good fairy, as the good old times of Queen Joanna. Countless castles,
bridges, churches, monuments, testify to her life among this
enthusiastic people. Roads and ruins, towers and aqueducts, bear her
name. Proverbs exist wherein it is preserved. "For us," says Mistral,
"the fair Joanna is what Mary Stuart is for the Scotch,--a mirage of
retrospective love, a regret of youth, of nationality, of poetry passed
away. And analogies are not lacking in the lives of the two royal,
tragic enchantresses." Petrarch, speaking of her and her young husband
surrounded by Hungarians, refers to them as two lambs among wolves. In a
letter dated from Vancluse, August, 1346, he deplores the death of the
King, but