his left hand played with his slight moustache while he secretly cast on Joan a glance of audacious boldness.  The group was completed by Dona Cancha, the young chamberwoman to the princesses, and by the Count of Terlizzi, who exchanged with her many a furtive look and many an open smile.  The second group was composed of Andre, Joan’s husband, and Friar Robert, tutor to the young prince, who had come with him from Budapesth, and never left him for a minute.  Andre was at this time perhaps eighteen years old:  at first sight one was struck by the extreme regularity of his features, his handsome, noble face, and abundant fair hair; but among all these Italian faces, with their vivid animation, his countenance lacked expression, his eyes seemed dull, and something hard and icy in his looks revealed his wild character and foreign extraction.  His tutor’s portrait Petrarch has drawn for us:  crimson face, hair and beard red, figure short and crooked; proud in poverty, rich and miserly; like a second Diogenes, with hideous and deformed limbs barely concealed beneath his friar’s frock.

In the third group stood the widow of Philip, Prince of Tarentum, the king’s brother, honoured at the court of Naples with the title of Empress of Constantinople, a style inherited by her as the granddaughter of Baldwin ii.  Anyone accustomed to sound the depths of the human heart would at one glance have perceived that this woman under her ghastly pallor concealed an implacable hatred, a venomous jealousy, and an all-devouring ambition.  She had her three sons about her—­Robert, Philip, and Louis, the youngest.  Had the king chosen out from among his nephews the handsomest, bravest, and most generous, there can be no doubt that Louis of Tarentum would have obtained the crown.  At the age of twenty-three he had already excelled the cavaliers of most renown in feats of arms; honest, loyal, and brave, he no sooner conceived a project than he promptly carried it out.  His brow shone in that clear light which seems to serve as a halo of success to natures so privileged as his; his fine eyes, of a soft and velvety black, subdued the hearts of men who could not resist their charm, and his caressing smile made conquest sweet.  A child of destiny, he had but to use his will; some power unknown, some beneficent fairy had watched over his birth, and undertaken to smooth away all obstacles, gratify all desires.

Near to him, but in the fourth group, his cousin Charles of Duras stood and scowled.  His mother, Agnes, the widow of the Duke of Durazzo and Albania, another of the king’s brothers, looked upon him affrighted, clutching to her breast her two younger sons, Ludovico, Count of Gravina, and Robert, Prince of Morea.  Charles, pale-faced, with short hair and thick beard, was glancing with suspicion first at his dying uncle and then at Joan and the little Marie, then again at his cousins, apparently so excited by tumultuous thoughts that he could not stand still.  His feverish uneasiness presented a marked contrast with the calm, dreamy face of Bertrand d’Artois, who, giving precedence to his father Charles, approached the queen at the foot of the bed, and so found himself face to face with Joan.  The young man was so absorbed by the beauty of the princess that he seemed to see nothing else in the room.