Avignon
outshine the glories of Rome, and in language that fairly glitters with
its high-sounding, highly colored words. We hear of Petrarch and Laura,
and the associations of Vaucluse.

At this juncture the Prince arrives, and is struck by the resemblance of
the scene to a court of love; he wonders if they are not discussing the
question whether love is not drowned in the nuptial holy water font, or
whether the lady inspires the lover as much with her presence as when
absent. And the Queen defends her mode of life and temperament; she
cannot brook the cold and gloomy ways of the north. Were we to apply
the methods of Voltaire's strictures of Corneille to this play, it might
be interesting to see how many _vers de comedie_ could be found in these
scenes of dispute between the prince consort and his light-hearted wife.

"A l'avans! zou! en festo arrouinas lou Tresor!"

Go ahead! that's right, ruin the treasury with your feasts!

and to his objections to so many flattering courtiers, the Queen
replies:--

"Voules que moun palais devengue un mounastie?"

Do you want my palace to become a monastery?

Joanna replies nobly and eloquently to the threats of her husband to
assume mastery over her by violent means, and, in spite of the
anachronism (the poet makes her use and seemingly invent the term
_Renascence_), her defence of the arts and science of her time is
forceful and enthusiastic, and carries the reader along. That this sort
of eloquence is dramatic, appears, however, rather doubtful.

The next scene interests us more directly in the characters before us.
The Prince, left alone with his confidant, Fra Rupert, gives expression
to his passionate love for the Queen, and pours forth the bitterness of
his soul to see it unrequited. The fierce Hungarian monk denounces,
rather justly, it appears to us, the license and levity of the Italian
court, and incites Andrea to an appeal to the Pope, "a potentate that
has no army, whose dominion extends from pole to pole, who binds and
unbinds at his will, upholds, makes, or unmakes thrones as an almighty
master."

But Andrea fears the Queen would never pardon him.

"E se noun ai en plen lou meu si caresso,
L'emperi universal! m'es un gourg d'amaresso!"

And if I have not fully the honey of her caresses
The empire of the world is to me a gulf of bitterness.

Finally the monk and La Catanaise stand alone before us. This woman is
the Queen'