rd on Robert's actions.

An event outside all human foresight occurred to upset the calculations
of the two cousins. One day while they were out together on horseback,
as they often were since their pretended reconciliation, Louis of
Tarentum, Robert's youngest brother, who had always felt for Joan a
chivalrous, innocent love,--a love which a young man of twenty is apt to
lock up in his heart as a secret treasure,--Louis, we say, who had held
aloof from the infamous family conspiracy and had not soiled his hands
with Andre's blood, drawn on by an irrepressible passion, all at once
appeared at the gates of Castel Nuovo; and while his brother was wasting
precious hours in asking for a promise of marriage, had the bridge raised
and gave the soldiers strict orders to admit no one. Then, never
troubling himself about Charles's anger or Robert's jealousy, he hurried
to the queen's room, and there, says Domenico Gravina, without any
preamble, the union was consummated.

On returning from his ride, Robert, astonished that the bridge was not at
once lowered for him, at first loudly called upon the soldiers on guard
at the fortress, threatening severe punishment for their unpardonable
negligence; but as the gates did not open and the soldiers made no sign
of fear or regret, he fell into a violent fit of rage, and swore he would
hang the wretches like dogs for hindering his return home. But the
Empress of Constantinople, terrified at the bloody quarrel beginning
between the two brothers, went alone and on foot to her son, and making
use of her maternal authority to beg him to master his feelings, there in
the presence of the crowd that had come up hastily to witness the strange
scene, she related in a low voice all that had passed in his absence.

A roar as of a wounded tiger escaped from Robert's breast: all but blind
with rage, he nearly trampled his mother under the feet of his horse,
which seemed to feel his master's anger, and plunging violently, breathed
blood from his nostrils. When the prince had poured every possible
execration on his brother's head, he turned and galloped away from the
accursed castle, flying to the Duke of Durazzo, whom he had only just
left, to tell him of this outrage and stir him to revenge. Charles was
talking carelessly with his young wife, who was but little used to such
tranquil conversation and expansiveness, when the Prince of Tarentum,
exhausted, out of breath, bathed in perspiration, ca