the sea. But God never allows a murder to go unpunished: James preferred
the queen to her sister, and the widow of Charles of Durazzo gained
nothing by her crime but the contempt of the man she loved, and a bitter
remorse which brought her while yet young to the tomb.

Joan was married in turn to James of Aragon, son of the King of Majorca,
and to Otho of Brunswick, of the imperial family of Saxony. We will pass
rapidly over these years, and come to the denouement of this history of
crime and expiation. James, parted from his wife, continued his stormy
career, after a long contest in Spain with Peter the Cruel, who had
usurped his kingdom: about the end of the year 1375 he died near
Navarre. Otho also could not escape the Divine vengeance which hung
over the court of Naples, but to the end he valiantly shared the queen's
fortunes. Joan, since she had no lawful heir, adopted her nephew,
Charles de la Paix (so called after the peace of Trevisa). He was the
son of Louis Duras, who after rebelling against Louis of Tarentum, had
died miserably in the castle of Ovo. The child would have shared his
father's fate had not Joan interceded to spare his life, loaded him with
kindness, and married him to Margaret, the daughter of her sister Marie
and her cousin Charles, who was put to death by the King of Hungary.

Serious differences arose between the queen and one of her former
subjects, Bartolommeo Prigiani, who had become pope under the name of
Urban VI. Annoyed by the queen's opposition, the pope one day angrily
said he would shut her up in a convent. Joan, to avenge the insult,
openly favoured Clement VII, the anti-pope, and offered him a home in
her own castle, when, pursued by Pope Urban's army, he had taken refuge
at Fondi. But the people rebelled against Clement, and killed the
Archbishop of Naples, who had helped to elect him: they broke the cross
that was carried in procession before the anti-pope, and hardly allowed