to be a child--fifty years of disillusionment and suffering. She
thought first of her happy, peaceful childhood, her grandfather's blind
affection, the pure joys of her days of innocence, the exciting games
with her little sister and tall cousins. Then she shuddered at the
earliest thought of marriage, the constraint, the loss of liberty, the
bitter regrets; she remembered with horror the deceitful words murmured
in her ear, designed to sow the seeds of corruption and vice that were
to poison her whole life. Then came the burning memories of her first
love, the treachery and desertion of Robert of Cabane, the moments of
madness passed like a dream in the arms of Bertrand of Artois--the whole
drama up to its tragic denouement showed as in letters of fire on the
dark background of her sombre thoughts. Then arose cries of anguish in
her soul, even as on that terrible fatal night she heard the voice of
Andre asking mercy from his murderers. A long deadly silence followed
his awful struggle, and the queen saw before her eyes the carts of
infamy and the torture of her accomplices. All the rest of this vision
was persecution, flight, exile, remorse, punishments from God and curses
from the world. Around her was a frightful solitude: husbands, lovers,
kindred, friends, all were dead; all she had loved or hated in the world
were now no more; her joy, pain, desire, and hope had vanished for
ever. The poor queen, unable to free herself from these visions of woe,
violently tore herself away from the awful reverie, and kneeling at a
prie-dieu, prayed with fervour. She was still beautiful, in spite of her
extreme pallor; the noble lines of her face kept their pure oval; the
fire of repentance in her great black eyes lit them up with superhuman
brilliance, and the hope of pardon played in a heavenly smile upon her
lips.

Suddenly the door of the room where Joan was so earnestly praying opened
with a dull sound: two Hungarian barons in armour entered and signed to