g his dagger like a bolt into the lock,
stopped his entrance. The prince, calling aloud the whole time and
imploring the protection of his friends, returned to the hall; but all
the doors were shut, and no one held out a helping hand; for the queen
was silent, showing no uneasiness about her husband's death.

But the nurse Isolda, terrified by the shouting of her beloved son and
lord, leapt from her bed and went to the window, filling the house with
dreadful cries. The traitors, alarmed by the mighty uproar, although
the place was lonely and so far from the centre of the town that nobody
could have come to see what the noise was, were on the point of letting
their victim go, when Bertrand of Artois, who felt he was more guilty
than the others, seized the prince with hellish fury round the waist,
and after a desperate struggle got him down; then dragging him by the
hair of his head to a balcony which gave upon the garden, and pressing
one knee upon his chest, cried out to the others--

"Come here, barons: I have what we want to strangle him with."

And round his neck he passed a long cord of silk and gold, while the
wretched man struggled all he could. Bertrand quickly drew up the knot,
and the others threw the body over the parapet of the balcony, leaving
it hanging between earth and sky until death ensued. When the Count of
Terlizzi averted his eyes from the horrid spectacle, Robert of Cabane
cried out imperiously--

"What are you doing there? The cord is long enough for us all to hold:
we want not witnesses, we want accomplices!"

As soon as the last convulsive movements of the dying man had ceased,
they let the corpse drop the whole height of the three storeys, and
opening the doors of the hall, departed as though nothing had happened.

Isolda, when at last she contrived to get a light, rapidly ran to the
queen's chamber, and finding the door shut on the inside, began to call
loudly on her Andre. There was no answer, though the queen was in the
room. The poor nurse, distracted, trembling, desperate, ran down all
the corridors, knocked at all the cells and woke the monks one by one,
begging them to help her look for the prince. The monks said that they
had indeed heard a noise, but thinking it was a quarrel between soldiers
drunken perhaps or mutinous, they had not thought it their business
to interfere. Isolda eagerly, entreated: the alarm spread through the
convent; the monks followed the nurse, who went on bef