behold a frightful vision rising before him.
The same cord he had used when he strangled Andre, he now saw round the
queen's neck, so tight that it made its way into her flesh: an invisible
force, a Satanic impulse, urged him to strangle with his own hands the
woman he had loved so dearly, had at one time adored on his knees. The
count rushed out of the room with gestures of desperation, muttering
incoherent words; and as he shewed plain signs of mental aberration, his
father, Charles of Artois, took him away, and they went that same evening
to their palace of St. Agatha, and there prepared a defence in case they
should be attacked.

But Joan's punishment, which was destined to be slow as well as dreadful,
to last thirty-seven years and end in a ghastly death, was now only
beginning. All the wretched beings who were stained with Andre's death
came in turn to her to demand the price of blood. The Catanese and her
son, who held in their hands not only the queen's honour but her life,
now became doubly greedy and exacting. Dona Cancha no longer put any
bridle on her licentiousness, and the Empress of Constantinople ordered
her niece to marry her eldest son, Robert, Prince of Tarentum. Joan,
consumed by remorse, full of indignation and shame at the arrogant
conduct of her subjects, dared scarcely lift her head, and stooped to
entreaties, only stipulating for a few days' delay before giving her
answer: the empress consented, on condition that her son should come to
reside at Castel Nuovo, with permission to see the queen once a day.
Joan bowed her head in silence, and Robert of Tarentum was installed at
the castle.

Charles of Durazzo, who by the death of Andre had practically become the
head of the family, and, would, by the terms of his grandfather's will,
inherit the kingdom by right of his wife Marie in the case of Joan's
dying without lawful issue, sent to the queen two commands: first, that
she should not dream of contracting a new marriage without first
consulting him in the choice of a husband; secondly, that she should
invest him at once with the title of Duke of Calabria. To compel his
cousin to make these two concessions, he added that if she should be so
ill advised as to refuse either of them, he should hand over to justice
the proofs of the crime and the names of the murderers. Joan, bending
beneath the weight of this new difficulty, could think of no way to avoid
it; but Catherine, who alone was stout