s of Anjou had at last got together an army of 50,000 men
and was marching in hot haste to the conquest of the kingdom. None of
this news had reached the ears of Joan, who for some days had lived in
complete isolation. The spring lavished all her glory on these enchanted
plains, which have earned the name of the blessed and happy country,
campagna felite. The orange trees were covered with sweet white
blossoms, the cherries laden with ruby fruit, the olives with young
emerald leaves, the pomegranate feathery with red bells; the wild
mulberry, the evergreen laurel, all the strong budding vegetation,
needing no help from man to flourish in this spot privileged by Nature,
made one great garden, here and there interrupted by little hidden
runlets. It was a forgotten Eden in this corner of the world. Joan at
her window was breathing in the perfumes of spring, and her eyes misty
with tears rested on a bed of flowery verdure; a light breeze, keen and
balmy, blew upon her burning brow and offered a grateful coolness to her
damp and fevered cheeks. Distant melodious voices, refrains of well-known
songs, were all that disturbed the silence of the poor little room, the
solitary nest where a life was passing away in tears and repentance, a
life the most brilliant and eventful of a century of splendour and
unrest.

The queen was slowly reviewing in her mind all her life since she ceased
to be a child--fifty years of disillusionment and suffering. She thought
first of her happy, peaceful childhood, her grandfather's blind
affection, the pure joys of her days of innocence, the exciting games
with her little sister and tall cousins. Then she shuddered at the
earliest thought of marriage, the constraint, the loss of liberty, the
bitter regrets; she remembered with horror the deceitful words murmured
in her ear, designed to sow the seeds of corruption and vice that were to
poison her whole life. Then came the burning memories of her first love,
the treachery and desertion of Robert of Cabane, the moments of madness
passed like a dream in the arms of Bertrand of Artois--the whole drama up
to its tragic denouement showed as in letters of fire on the dark
background of her sombre thoughts. Then arose cries of anguish in her
soul, even as on that terrible fatal night she heard the voice of Andre
asking mercy from his murderers. A long deadly silence followed his
awful struggle, and the queen saw before her eyes the carts of infamy and