said already of Joanna's love for study and of her unusual attainments,
but a word or two more will be necessary to complete the picture. Her
wonderful gifts and her evident delight in studious pursuits were no
mere show of childish precocity which would disappear with her maturer
growth, for they ever remained with her and made her one of the very
exceptional women of her day and generation. Imagine her there in the
court of her grandfather, where no woman before her had ever shown the
least real and intelligent interest in his intellectual occupations. It
was a great thing, of course, for all the ladies of the court to have
some famous poet come and tarry with them for a while; but they thought
only of a possible _affaire d'amour_, and odes and sonnets descriptive
of their charms. There was little appreciative understanding of
literature or poetry among them, and they were quite content to sip
their pleasures from a cup which was not of the Pierian spring. Joanna,
however, seemed to enter earnestly into the literary diversions of the
king, and many an hour did they spend together in the great library of
the palace, unfolding now one and now another of the many parchment
rolls and poring over their contents. Three learned languages there were
at this time in this part of the world, the Greek, the Latin, and the
Arabic, and the day had just begun to dawn when the common idioms of
daily speech were beginning to assert their literary value. So it is but
natural to assume that the majority of these manuscripts were in these
three languages, and that it required no small amount of learning on
Joanna's part to be able to decipher them.

Far different from this little princess was Maria of Sicily, a woman of
many charms, but vain and inconstant, and satisfied with the frivolities
of life. Indeed, it must be said that it is solely on account of her
love for the poet Boccaccio, after her marriage to the Count of Artois,
that she is known to-day. Boccaccio had journeyed to the south from