“Do not force me to have you turned out of this room,” said Joan, advancing towards the door.

“Now do not get excited, my fair cousin; I am going:  but at least remember that I offered you my hand and you refused it.  Remember what I say at this solemn moment:  to-day I am the guilty man; some day perhaps I may be the judge.”

He went away slowly, twice turning his head, repeating in the language of signs his menacing prophecy.  Joan hid her face in her hands, and for a long time remained plunged in dismal reflections; then anger got the better of all her other feelings, and she summoned Dona Cancha, bidding her not to allow anybody to enter, on any pretext whatsoever.

This prohibition was not for the Count of Artois, for the reader will remember that he was in the adjoining room.

CHAPTER III

Night fell, and from the Molo to the Mergellina, from the Capuano Castle to the hill of St. Elmo, deep silence had succeeded the myriad sounds that go up from the noisiest city in the world.  Charles of Durazzo, quickly walking away from the square of the Correggi, first casting one last look of vengeance at the Castel Nuovo, plunged into the labyrinth of dark streets that twist and turn, cross and recross one another, in this ancient city, and after a quarter of an hour’s walking, that was first slow, then very rapid, arrived at his ducal palace near the church of San Giovanni al Mare.  He gave certain instructions in a harsh, peremptory tone to a page who took his sword and cloak.  Then Charles shut himself into his room, without going up to see his poor mother, who was weeping, sad and solitary over her son’s ingratitude, and like every other mother taking her revenge by praying God to bless him.

The Duke of Durazzo walked up and down his room several times like a lion in a cage, counting the minutes in a fever of impatience, and was on the point of summoning a servant and renewing his commands, when two dull raps on the door informed him that the person he was waiting for had arrived.  He opened at once, and a man of about fifty, dressed in black from head to foot, entered, humbly bowing, and carefully shut the door behind him.  Charles threw himself into an easy-chair, and gazing fixedly at the man who stood before him, his eyes on the ground and his arms crossed upon his breast in an attitude of the deepest respect and blind obedience, he said slowly, as though weighing each word—­

“Master Nicholas of Melazzo, have you any remembrance left of the services I once rendered you?”

The man to whom these words were addressed trembled in every limb, as if he heard the voice of Satan come to claim his soul; then lifting a look of terror to his questioner’s face, he asked in a voice of gloom—­

“What have I done, my lord, to deserve this reproach?”

“It is not a reproach:  I ask a simple question.”