. She
could have ruined Charles with a single word; but she scorned so base a
revenge, and treated him with utter contempt. Thus the court was split
into two factions: the Hungarians with Friar Robert at their head and
supported by Charles of Durazzo; on the other side all the nobility of
Naples, led by the Princes of Tarentum. Joan, influenced by the grand
seneschal's widow and her two daughters, the Countesses of Terlizzi and
Morcone, and also by Dona Cancha and the Empress of Constantinople, took
the side of the Neapolitan party against the pretensions of her husband.
The partisans of the queen made it their first care to have her name
inscribed upon all public acts without adding Andre's; but Joan, led by
an instinct of right and justice amid all the corruption of her court,
had only consented to this last after she had taken counsel with Andre
d'Isernia, a very learned lawyer of the day, respected as much for his
lofty character as for his great learning. The prince, annoyed at being
shut out in this way, began to act in a violent and despotic manner.
On his own authority he released prisoners; he showered favours upon
Hungarians, and gave especial honours and rich gifts to Giovanni Pipino,
Count of Altanuera, the enemy of all others most dreaded and detested by
the Neapolitan barons. Then the Counts of San Severino, Mileto, Terlizzi
and Balzo, Calanzaro and Sant' Angelo, and most of the grandees,
exasperated by the haughty insolence of Andre's favourite, which grew
every day more outrageous, decided that he must perish, and his master
with him, should he persist in attacking their privileges and defying
their anger.

Moreover, the women who were about Joan at the court egged her on, each
one urged by a private interest, in the pursuit of her fresh passion.
Poor Joan,--neglected by her husband and betrayed by Robert of
Cabane--gave way beneath the burden of duties beyond her strength to
bear, and fled for refuge to the arms of Bertrand of Artois, whose love
she did not even attempt to resist; for every feeling for religion
and virtue had been destroyed in her own set purpose, and her young
inclinations had been early bent towards vice, just as the bodies of
wretched children are bent and their bones broken by jugglers when
they train them. Bertrand himself felt an adoration for her surpassing
ordinary human passion. When he reached the summit of a happiness to
which in his wildest dreams he had never dared to aspir