“Speak, in God’s name, speak before I die!”

“Mother, you are with child.”

“What!” cried Agnes, with a loud cry, which broke her very heart.  “O God, forgive him!  Charles, your mother forgives and blesses you in death.”

Charles fell upon her neck, desperately crying for help:  he would now have gladly saved her at the cost of his life, but it was too late.  He uttered one cry that came from his heart, and was found stretched out upon his mother’s corpse.

Strange comments were made at the court on the death of the Duchess of Durazzo and her doctor’s disappearance; but there was no doubt at all that grief and gloom were furrowing wrinkles on Charles’s brow, which was already sad enough.  Catherine alone knew the terrible cause of her nephew’s depression, for to her it was very plain that the duke at one blow had killed his mother and her physician.  But she had never expected a reaction so sudden and violent in a man who shrank before no crime.  She had thought Charles capable of everything except remorse.  His gloomy, self absorbed silence seemed a bad augury for her plans.  She had desired to cause trouble for him in his own family, so that he might have no time to oppose the marriage of her son with the queen; but she had shot beyond her mark, and Charles, started thus on the terrible path of crime, had now broken through the bonds of his holiest affections, and gave himself up to his bad passions with feverish ardour and a savage desire for revenge.  Then Catherine had recourse to gentleness and submission.  She gave her son to understand that there was only one way of obtaining the queen’s hand, and that was by flattering the ambition of Charles and in some sort submitting himself to his patronage.  Robert of Tarentum understood this, and ceased making court to Joan, who received his devotion with cool kindness, and attached himself closely to Charles, paying him much the same sort of respect and deference that he himself had affected for Andre, when the thought was first in his mind of causing his ruin.  But the Duke of Durazzo was by no means deceived as to the devoted friendship shown towards him by the heir of the house of Tarentum, and pretending to be deeply touched by the unexpected change of feeling, he all the time kept a strict guard on Robert’s actions.

An event outside all human foresight occurred to upset the calculations of the two cousins.  One day while they were out together on horseback, as they often were since their pretended reconciliation, Louis of Tarentum, Robert’s youngest brother, who had always felt for Joan a chivalrous, innocent love,—­a love which a young man of twenty is apt to lock up in his heart as a secret treasure,—­Louis, we say, who had held aloof from the infamous family conspiracy and had not soiled his hands with Andre’s blood, drawn on by an irrepressible passion, all at once appeared at the gates of Castel Nuovo; and while his brother was wasting precious hours in asking for a promise of marriage, had the bridge raised and gave the soldiers strict orders to admit no one.  Then, never troubling himself about Charles’s anger or Robert’s jealousy, he hurried to the queen’s room, and there, says Domenico Gravina, without any preamble, the union was consummated.