h blood and sweat, his sword broken in his hand, he was forced to
surrender. An hour later Charles was writing to his uncle, the King of
Hungary, that Joan had fallen into his power, and he only awaited His
Majesty's orders to decide her fate.

It was a fine May morning: the queen was under guard in the castle
of Aversa: Otho had obtained his liberty on condition of his quitting
Naples, and Louis of Anjou had at last got together an army of 50,000
men and was marching in hot haste to the conquest of the kingdom. None
of this news had reached the ears of Joan, who for some days had lived
in complete isolation. The spring lavished all her glory on these
enchanted plains, which have earned the name of the blessed and happy
country, campagna felite. The orange trees were covered with sweet white
blossoms, the cherries laden with ruby fruit, the olives with young
emerald leaves, the pomegranate feathery with red bells; the wild
mulberry, the evergreen laurel, all the strong budding vegetation,
needing no help from man to flourish in this spot privileged by Nature,
made one great garden, here and there interrupted by little hidden
runlets. It was a forgotten Eden in this corner of the world. Joan at
her window was breathing in the perfumes of spring, and her eyes misty
with tears rested on a bed of flowery verdure; a light breeze, keen and
balmy, blew upon her burning brow and offered a grateful coolness to
her damp and fevered cheeks. Distant melodious voices, refrains of
well-known songs, were all that disturbed the silence of the poor little
room, the solitary nest where a life was passing away in tears and
repentance, a life the most brilliant and eventful of a century of
splendour and unrest.

The queen was slowly reviewing in her mind all her life since she ceased
to be a child--fifty years of disillusionment and suffering. She
thought first of her happy, peaceful childhood, her grandfather's blind
affection, the pure joys of her days of innocence, the exciting games
with her little sister and tall cousins. Then she shuddered at the
earliest thought of marriage, the constraint, the loss of liberty, the
bitter regrets; she remembered with horror the deceitful words murmured
in her ear, designed to sow the seeds of corruption and vice that were
to poison her whole life. Then came the burning memories of her first
love, the treachery and desertion of Robert of Cabane, the moments of
madness passed like a dream in the arms