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, she entered the prison where Robert des Baux was still suffering
for a fault more his father's than his own. Marie stood before the
prisoner, her arms crossed, her cheeks livid, her lips trembling. It was
a terrible interview. This time it was she who threatened, the man who
entreated pardon. Marie was deaf to his prayers, and the head of the
luckless man fell bleeding at her feet, and her men threw the body into