cted event suddenly occurred, causing such injury as might well
suffice to upset the edifice of her fortunes that had been raised stone
by stone patiently and slowly: this edifice was now undermined and
threatened to fall in a single day. It was the sudden apparition of
Friar Robert, who followed to the court of Rome his young pupil, who
from infancy had been Joan's destined husband, which thus shattered all
the designs of the Catanese and seriously menaced her future. The monk
had not been slow to understand that so long as she remained at the
court, Andre would be no more than the slave, possibly even the
victim, of his wife. Thus all Friar Robert's thoughts were obstinately
concentrated on a single end, that of getting rid of the Catanese or
neutralising her influence. The prince's tutor and the governess of the
heiress had but to exchange one glance, icy, penetrating, plain to read:
their looks met like lightning flashes of hatred and of vengeance. The
Catanese, who felt she was detected, lacked courage to fight this man
in the open, and so conceived the hope of strengthening her tottering
empire by the arts of corruption and debauchery. She instilled by
degrees into her pupil's mind the poison of vice, inflamed her youthful
imagination with precocious desires, sowed in her heart the seeds of an
unconquerable aversion for her husband, surrounded the poor child
with abandoned women, and especially attached to her the beautiful and
attractive Dona Cancha, who is branded by contemporary authors with
the name of a courtesan; then summed up all these lessons in infamy by
prostituting Joan to her own son. The poor girl, polluted by sin before
she knew what life was, threw her whole self into this first passion
with all the ardour of youth, and loved Robert of Cabane so violently,
so madly, that the Catanese congratulated herself on the success of her
infamy, believing that she held her prey so fast in her toils that her
victim would never attempt to escape them.

A year passed by before Joan, conquered by her infatuation, conceived
the smallest suspicion of her lover's sincerity. He, more ambitious than
affectionate, found it easy to conceal his coldness under the cloak of
a brotherly intimacy, of blind submission, and of unswerving devotion;
perhaps he would have deceived his mistress for a longer time had not
Bertrand of Artois fallen madly in love with Joan. Suddenly the bandage
fell from the young girl's eyes; comparin