As he left off speaking, the king rose, and as the duke went up to take
his leave, his face suddenly changed, and he cried in an awful voice--

"Traitor! At length you are in my hands, and you shall die as you
deserve; but before you are handed over to the executioner, confess
with your own lips your deeds of treachery towards our royal majesty:
so shall we need no other witness to condemn you to a punishment
proportioned to your crimes. Between our two selves, Duke of Durazzo,
tell me first why, by your infamous manoeuvring, you aided your uncle,
the Cardinal of Perigord, to hinder the coronation of my brother, and
so led him on, since he had no royal prerogative of his own, to his
miserable end? Oh, make no attempt to deny it. Here is the letter sealed
with your seal; in secret you wrote it, but it accuses you in public.
Then why, after bringing us hither to avenge our brother's death, of
which you beyond all doubt were the cause,--why did you suddenly turn to
the queen's party and march against our town of Aquila, daring to raise
an army against our faithful subjects? You hoped, traitor, to make use
of us as a footstool to mount the throne withal, as soon as you were
free from every other rival. Then you would but have awaited our
departure to kill the viceroy we should have left in our place, and so
seize the kingdom. But this time your foresight has been at fault. There
is yet another crime worse than all the rest, a crime of high treason,
which I shall remorselessly punish. You carried off the bride that our
ancestor King Robert designed for me, as you knew, by his will. Answer,
wretch what excuse can you make for the rape of the Princess Marie?"

Anger had so changed Louis's voice that the last words sounded like the
roar of a wild beast: his eyes glittered with a feverish light, his lips
were pale and trembling. Charles and his brothers fell upon their knees,
frozen by mortal terror, and the unhappy duke twice tried to speak, but