mpressing itself once and for ever. Tall and slender, but without the
excessive thinness of some young girls, her movements had that careless
supple grace that recall the waving of a flower stalk in the breeze. But
in spite of all these smiling and innocent graces one could yet discern
in Robert's heiress a will firm and resolute to brave every obstacle, and
the dark rings that circled her fine eyes plainly showed that her heart
was already agitated by passions beyond her years.

Beside Joan stood her younger sister, Marie, who was twelve or thirteen
years of age, the second daughter of Charles, Duke of Calabria, who had
died before her birth, and whose mother, Marie of Valois, had unhappily
been lost to her from her cradle. Exceedingly pretty and shy, she seemed
distressed by such an assembly of great personages, and quietly drew near
to the widow of the grand seneschal, Philippa, surnamed the Catanese, the
princesses' governess, whom they honoured as a mother. Behind the
princesses and beside this lady stood her son, Robert of Cabane, a
handsome young man, proud and upright, who with his left hand played with
his slight moustache while he secretly cast on Joan a glance of audacious
boldness. The group was completed by Dona Cancha, the young chamberwoman
to the princesses, and by the Count of Terlizzi, who exchanged with her
many a furtive look and many an open smile. The second group was
composed of Andre, Joan's husband, and Friar Robert, tutor to the young
prince, who had come with him from Budapesth, and never left him for a
minute. Andre was at this time perhaps eighteen years old: at first
sight one was struck by the extreme regularity of his features, his
handsome, noble face, and abundant fair hair; but among all these Italian
faces, with their vivid animation, his countenance lacked expression, his
eyes seemed dull, and something hard and icy in his looks revealed his
wild character and foreign extraction. His tutor's portrait Petrarch has
drawn for us: crimson face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked;
proud in poverty, rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous
and deformed limbs barely concealed beneath his friar's frock.

In the third group stood the widow of Philip, Prince of Tarentum, the
king's brother, honoured at the court of Naples with the title of Empress
of Constantinople, a style inherited by her as the granddaughter of
Baldwin II. Anyone accustomed to sound the depth