e torture to wring from them confessions
that must gradually pull down the rest, and in the end Giovanna herself.

Terlizzi, alive to his danger when he heard of the arrest of those two,
made a bold and desperate attempt to avert it. Riding forth with a band
of followers, he attacked the escort that was bearing Pace to prison.
The prisoner was seized, but not to be rescued. All that Terlizzi wanted
was his silence. By his orders the wretched man's tongue was torn out,
whereupon he was abandoned once more to his guards and his fate.

Had Terlizzi been able to carry out his intentions of performing
the like operation upon Melazzo, Charles might have been placed in a
difficult position. So much, however, did not happen, and the horrible
deed upon Pace was in vain. Put to the question, Melazzo denounced
Terlizzi, and together with him Cabane, Morcone, and the others.
Further, his confession incriminated Filippa, the Catanese, and her two
daughters, the wives of Terlizzi and Morcone. Of the Queen, however, he
said nothing, because, one of the lesser conspirators, little more
than a servant like Pace, he can have had no knowledge of the Queen's
complicity.

The arrest of the others followed instantly, and, sentenced to death,
they were publicly burned in the Square of Sant' Eligio, after suffering
all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century torture, which
continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged intention of inducing
them to denounce any further accomplices. But though they writhed and
fainted under the pincers of the executioners, they confessed nothing.
Indeed, they preserved a silence which left the people amazed, for the
people lacked the explanation. The Grand Justiciary, Hugh des Baux,
had seen to it that the Pope's injunctions should be obeyed. Lest the
condemned should say too much, he had taken the precaution of having
their tongues fastened down with fish-hooks.

Thus Charles was momentarily baulked, and he was further baulked by the
fact that Giovanna had taken a second husband, in her cousin, Louis
of Taranto. Unless matters were to remain there and the game end in
a stalemate, bold measures were required, and those measures Charles
adopted. He wrote to the King of Hungary now openly accusing Giovanna
of the murder, and pointing out the circumstances that in themselves
afforded corroboration of his charge.

Those circumstances Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which
he wrote to Gio