y he had escaped from his dreadful prison, he wandered from one
court to another seeking aid; it is even said that he was reduced to
the lowest degree of poverty and forced to beg his bread. The young
stranger's beauty and his adventures combined had impressed both Joan
and Marie at the court of Avignon. Marie especially had conceived a
violent passion for him, all the more so for the efforts she made to
conceal it in her own bosom. Ever since James of Aragon came to Naples,
the unhappy princess, married with a dagger at her throat, had desired
to purchase her liberty at the expense of crime. Followed by four armed
men, she entered the prison where Robert des Baux was still suffering
for a fault more his father's than his own. Marie stood before the
prisoner, her arms crossed, her cheeks livid, her lips trembling. It was
a terrible interview. This time it was she who threatened, the man who
entreated pardon. Marie was deaf to his prayers, and the head of the
luckless man fell bleeding at her feet, and her men threw the body into
the sea. But God never allows a murder to go unpunished: James preferred
the queen to her sister, and the widow of Charles of Durazzo gained
nothing by her crime but the contempt of the man she loved, and a bitter
remorse which brought her while yet young to the tomb.

Joan was married in turn to James of Aragon, son of the King of Majorca,
and to Otho of Brunswick, of the imperial family of Saxony. We will pass
rapidly over these years, and come to the denouement of this history of
crime and expiation. James, parted from his wife, continued his stormy
career, after a long contest in Spain with Peter the Cruel, who had
usurped his kingdom: about the end of the year 1375 he died near
Navarre. Otho also could not escape the Divine vengeance which hung
over the court of Naples, but to the end he valiantly shared the queen's
fortunes. Joan, since she had no lawful heir, adopted her nephew,
Charles de la Paix (so called after the peace of Trevisa). He was the
son of Louis Duras, who after rebelling against Louis of Tarentum, had
died miserably in the castle of Ovo. The child would have shared his
father's fate had not Joan interceded to spare his life, loaded him with
kindness, and married him to Margaret, the daughter of her sister Marie
and her cousin Charles, who was put to death by the King of Hungary.

Serious differences arose between the queen and one of her former
subjects, Bartolommeo Prigia