“Your doctor,” said Charles slowly and coldly, each word piercing his mother’s heart like a dagger,—­“your doctor cannot come.”

“Oh why?” asked Agnes, stupefied.

“Because no one ought to live who knows the secret of our shame.”

“Unhappy man!” she cried, overwhelmed with, pain and terror, “you have murdered him!  Perhaps you have poisoned your mother too!  Charles, Charles, have mercy on your own soul!”

“It is your doing,” said Charles, without show of emotion:  “you have driven me into crime and despair; you have caused my dishonour in this world and my damnation in the next.”

“What are you saying?  My own Charles, have mercy!  Do not let me die in this horrible uncertainty; what fatal delusion is blinding you?  Speak, my son, speak:  I am not feeling the poison now.  What have I done?  Of what have I been accused?”

She looked with haggard eyes at her son:  her maternal love still struggled against the awful thought of matricide; at last, seeing that Charles remained speechless in spite of her entreaties, she repeated, with a piercing cry—­

“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,