She told the tale of her husband's death
painfully and vividly, painted truthfully the mad terror that had seized
upon her and struck her down at that frightful time, raised her hands to
her brow with the gesture of despair, as though she would wrest the
madness from her brain--and a shudder of pity and awe passed through the
assembled crowd. It is a fact that at this moment, if her words were
false, her anguish was both sincere and terrible. An angel soiled by
crime, she lied like Satan himself, but like him too she suffered all the
agony of remorse and pride. Thus, when at the end of her speech she
burst into tears and implored help and protection against the usurper of
her kingdom, a cry of general assent drowned her closing words, several
hands flew to their sword-hilts, and the Hungarian ambassadors retired
covered with shame and confusion.

That same evening the sentence, to the great joy of all, was proclaimed,
that Joan was innocent and acquitted of all concern in the assassination
of her husband. But as her conduct after the event and the indifference
she had shown about pursuing the authors of the crime admitted of no
valid excuse, the pope declared that there were plain traces of magic,
and that the wrong-doing attributed to Joan was the result of some
baneful charm cast upon her, which she could by no possible means resist.
At the same time, His Holiness confirmed her marriage with Louis of
Tarentum, and bestowed on him the order of the Rose of Gold and the title
of King of Sicily and Jerusalem. Joan, it is true, had on the eve of her
acquittal sold the town of Avignon to the pope for the sum of 80,000
florins.

While the queen was pleading her cause at the court of Clement VI, a
dreadful epidemic, called the Black Plague--the same that Boccaccio has
described so wonderfully--was ravaging the kingdom of Naples, and indeed
the whole of Italy. According to the calculation of Matteo Villani,
Florence lost three-fifths of her population, Bologna two-thirds, and
nearly all Europe was reduced in some such frightful proportion. The
Neapolitans were already weary of the cruelties and greed of the
Hungarians, they were only awaiting some opportunity to revolt against
the stranger's oppression, and to recall their lawful sovereign, whom,
for all her ill deeds, they had never ceased to love. The attraction of
youth and beauty was deeply felt by this pleasure-loving people.
Scarcely had the pestilence thrown