of the church which from this day bore the name of
L'Incoronata. A general amnesty was declared for all who had taken part
in the late wars on either side, and the king and queen were greeted with
shouts of joy as they solemnly paraded beneath the canopy, with all the
barons of the kingdom in their train.

But the day's joy was impaired by an accident which to a superstitious
people seemed of evil augury. Louis of Tarentum, riding a richly
caparisoned horse, had just passed the Porta Petruccia, when some ladies
looking out from a high window threw such a quantity of flowers at the
king that his frightened steed reared and broke his rein. Louis could
not hold him, so jumped lightly to the ground; but the crown fell at his
feet and was broken into three pieces. On that very day the only
daughter of Joan and Louis died.

But the king not wishing to sadden the brilliant ceremony with show of
mourning, kept up the jousts and tournaments for three days, and in
memory of his coronation instituted the order of 'Chevaliers du Noeud'.
But from that day begun with an omen so sad, his life was nothing but a
series of disillusions. After sustaining wars in Sicily and Apulia, and
quelling the insurrection of Louis of Durazzo, who ended his days in the
castle of Ovo, Louis of Tarentum, worn out by a life of pleasure, his
health undermined by slow disease, overwhelmed with domestic trouble,
succumbed to an acute fever on the 5th of June 1362, at the age of
forty-two. His body had not been laid in its royal tomb at Saint
Domenico before several aspirants appeared to the hand of the queen.

One was the Prince of Majorca, the handsome youth we have already spoken
of: he bore her off triumphant over all rivals, including the son of the
King of France. James of Aragon had one of those faces of melancholy
sweetness which no woman can resist. Great troubles nobly borne had
thrown as it were a funereal veil over his youthful days: more than
thirteen years he had spent shut in an iron cage; when by the aid of a
false key he had escaped from his dreadful prison, he wandered from one
court to another seeking aid; it is even said that he was reduced to the
lowest degree of poverty and forced to beg his bread. The young
stranger's beauty and his adventures combined had impressed both Joan and
Marie at the court of Avignon. Marie especially had conceived a violent
passion for him, all the more so for the efforts she made to conceal it
i