ect a Neapolitan horse from the pernicious influence of a
casual passer-by.

We soon reach the sea-shore at Bagnoli, a little watering-place much
frequented by Neapolitans of the middle classes, and on looking back we
obtain a charming view of the headland of Posilipo and of stately Nisida,
the Nesis of the ancients, with its memories of Brutus, "the noblest Roman
of them all," who on this little island bade farewell for ever to his
devoted Portia. A very different tenant from the chaste Portia, however,
who once possessed a villa in this sea-girt retreat during the Middle
Ages, was Queen Joanna the Second, the last member of the Durazzo branch
of the Angevin royal house, and sister and heiress of King Ladislaus II.,
whose splendid monument in San Giovanni a Carbonara is one of the chief
artistic treasures of Naples. It is of course unnecessary here to remark
that there were two Queens of Naples, both Joanna by name, and that the
first of these, the contemporary of Petrarch (whose proper feeling she
contrived to shock) was certainly not a pattern of female virtue, but that
she shone as a moral paragon when contrasted with her name-sake and
successor, the sister of King Ladislaus. Of this second Queen, tradition
more or less accurate relates a host of stories, none of them to her
credit; how she dabbled in necromancy and was immersed in love intrigues,
the most celebrated of which was her amour with the handsome "Ser.
Gianni," Giovanni Caracciolo, head of an eminent family that has figured
prominently in Neapolitan history from the days of Angevin monarchs to
those of King Ferdinand. Little good did the fickle Queen's favour do Ser.
Gianni, who suffered an ignominious fate for having one day boxed Joanna's
ears during a lovers' tiff. Murdered secretly by four assassins,
Caracciolo's body was laid to rest in the family chapel in San Giovanni a
Carbonara beneath a splendid monument which is surmounted by the luckless
favourite's effigy. Joanna the First with all her faults was never guilty
of such light conduct as this, but the peasant mind is always impatient of
dry details of fact, so that in the popular imagination to-day both Queens
are blended into one personage, whose character, it is needless to say, is
about as vile as can be conceived. "Siccome la Regina Giovanna," is a form
of peasant execration around Naples that has some historical affinity with
the time-honoured Irish malediction of the "Curse o' Cromwell."

T