But for one who has honor in his breast and his soul,
    An insult, cousin, is purged with the sword.

Andrea turns to his knights, and leaving the room with them points to the flag bearing the block and axe as emblems.  The partisans of Joanna remain full of indignation.  La Catanaise addresses them.  The Sicilians, she says, waste no time in words, but have a speedier method of punishing a wrong, and she reminds them of the massacre at Palermo.  The Prince of Taranto discountenances the proposed crime, for the Queen’s fair name would suffer.  But the fierce woman points to the flag.  “Do you see that axe hanging from a thread?  You are all cowards!  Let me act alone.”  And the Prince nobly replies, “Philippine, battles are fought in the sunlight; men of our renown, men of my stamp, do not crouch down in the dark shadow of a plot.”  And the Catanaise again shows the flag.  “Do you see the axe falling upon the block?”

Joanna enters to offer the Prince her thanks for his chivalrous defence of her fair name, and dismisses the other courtiers.  The ensuing brief scene between the Queen and the Prince is really very eloquent and very beautiful.  The Queen recalls the fact that she was married at nine to Andrea, then only a child too; and she has never known love.  The poorest of the shepherdesses on the mountains of Calabria may quench her thirst at the spring, but she, the Queen of the Sun, if to pass away the time, or to have the appearance of happiness, she loves to listen to the echo of song, to behold the joy and brilliancy of a noble fete, her very smile becomes criminal.  And the Prince reminds her that she is the Provencal queen, and that in the great times of that people, if the consort were king, love was a god, and he recalls the names of all the ladies made famous by the Troubadours.  Thereupon the Queen in an outburst of enthusiasm truly Felibrean invokes the God of Love, the God that slew Dido, and speaks in the spirit of the days of courtly love, “O thou God of Love, hearken unto me.  If my fatal beauty is destined sooner or later to bring about my death, let this flame within me be, at least, the pyre that shall kindle the song of the poet!  Let my beauty be the luminous star exalting men’s hearts to lofty visions!”

The chivalrous Prince is dismissed, and Joanna is alone with, her thoughts.  The little page Dragonet sings outside a plaintive song with the refrain:—­

      “Que regret! 
    Jamai digues toun secret.”

      What regret! 
    Never tell thy secret.

La Catanaise endeavors to excite the fears of the Queen, insinuating that the Pope may give the crown to Andrea.  Joanna has no fear.

“We shall have but to appear before the country with this splendor of irresistible grace, and like the smoke borne away by the breeze, suddenly my enemies shall disappear.”

We may ask whether such self-praise comes gracefully from the Queen herself, whether she might not be less conscious of her own charm.  La Catanaise is again alone on the scene, threatening.  “The bow is drawn, the hen setting.”  This last comparison, the reader will remark, would be simply impossible as the termination of an act in a serious English play.  This last scene, too, is wofully weak and purposeless.