Joan of Naples | Page 7

hour is at hand, and soon I shall not have the strength to
speak my last words."
A few moments later the priest and the doctor re-entered the room, their
faces bathed, in tears. The king thanked them warmly for their care of
him in his last illness, and begged them help to dress him in the coarse
garb of a Franciscan monk, that God, as he said, seeing him die in
poverty, humility, and penitence, might the more easily grant him
pardon. The confessor and doctor placed upon his naked feet the
sandals worn by mendicant friars, robed him in a Franciscan frock, and
tied the rope about his waist. Stretched thus upon his bed, his brow
surmounted by his scanty locks, with his long white beard, and his
hands crossed upon his breast, the King of Naples looked like one of
those aged anchorites who spend their lives in mortifying the flesh, and
whose souls, absorbed in heavenly contemplation, glide insensibly
from out their last ecstasy into eternal bliss. Some time he lay thus with
closed eyes, putting up a silent prayer to God; then he bade them light
the spacious room as for a great solemnity, and gave a sign to the two
persons who stood, one at the head, the other at the foot of the bed. The
two folding doors opened, and the whole of the royal family, with the
queen at their head and the chief barons following, took their places in
silence around the dying king to hear his last wishes.
His eyes turned toward Joan, who stood next him on his right hand,
with an indescribable look of tenderness and grief. She was of a beauty
so unusual and so marvellous, that her grandfather was fascinated by
the dazzling sight, and mistook her for an angel that God had sent to
console him on his deathbed. The pure lines of her fine profile, her

great black liquid eyes, her noble brow uncovered, her hair shining like
the raven's wing, her delicate mouth, the whole effect of this beautiful
face on the mind of those who beheld her was that of a deep
melancholy and sweetness, impressing itself once and for ever. Tall and
slender, but without the excessive thinness of some young girls, her
movements had that careless supple grace that recall the waving of a
flower stalk in the breeze. But in spite of all these smiling and innocent
graces one could yet discern in Robert's heiress a will firm and resolute
to brave every obstacle, and the dark rings that circled her fine eyes
plainly showed that her heart was already agitated by passions beyond
her years.
Beside Joan stood her younger sister, Marie, who was twelve or
thirteen years of age, the second daughter of Charles, Duke of Calabria,
who had died before her birth, and whose mother, Marie of Valois, had
unhappily been lost to her from her cradle. Exceedingly pretty and shy,
she seemed distressed by such an assembly of great personages, and
quietly drew near to the widow of the grand seneschal, Philippa,
surnamed the Catanese, the princesses' governess, whom they honoured
as a mother. Behind the princesses and beside this lady stood her son,
Robert of Cabane, a handsome young man, proud and upright, who
with his left hand played with his slight moustache while he secretly
cast on Joan a glance of audacious boldness. The group was completed
by Dona Cancha, the young chamberwoman to the princesses, and by
the Count of Terlizzi, who exchanged with her many a furtive look and
many an open smile. The second group was composed of Andre, Joan's
husband, and Friar Robert, tutor to, the young prince, who had come
with him from Budapesth, and never left him for a minute. Andre was
at this time perhaps eighteen years old: at first sight one was struck by
the extreme regularity of his features, his handsome, noble face, and
abundant fair hair; but among all these Italian faces, with their vivid
animation, his countenance lacked expression, his eyes seemed dull,
and something hard and icy in his looks revealed his wild character and
foreign extraction. His tutor's portrait Petrarch has drawn for us:
crimson face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked; proud in
poverty, rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous and
deformed limbs barely concealed beneath his friar's frock.

In the third group stood the widow of Philip, Prince of Tarentum, the
king's brother, honoured at the court of Naples with the title of Empress
of Constantinople, a style inherited by her as the granddaughter of
Baldwin II. Anyone accustomed to sound the depths of the human heart
would at one glance have perceived that this woman under her ghastly
pallor concealed an implacable hatred, a