After the Hungarians had gone, the pope sent a legate to crown Joan and Louis of Tarentum, and the 25th of May, the day of Pentecost, was chosen for the ceremony.  All contemporary historians speak enthusiastically of this magnificent fete.  Its details have been immortalised by Giotto in the frescoes 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 in her own bosom.  Ever since James of Aragon came to Naples, the unhappy princess, married with a dagger at her throat, had desired to purchase her liberty at the expense of crime.  Followed by four armed men,