on them as her own-daughters. Thus Philippa the Catanese, honoured in
future as foster mother of the heiress to the throne of Naples, had
power to nominate her husband grand seneschal, one of the seven most
important offices in the kingdom, and to obtain knighthood for her sons.
Raymond of Cabane was buried like a king in a marble tomb in the church
of the Holy Sacrament, and there was speedily joined by two of his sons.
The third, Robert, a youth of extraordinary strength and beauty, gave
up an ecclesiastical career, and was himself made major-domo, his two
sisters being married to the Count of Merlizzi and the Count of Morcone
respectively. This was now the state of affairs, and the influence
of the grand seneschal's widow seemed for ever established, when an
unexpected event suddenly occurred, causing such injury as might well
suffice to upset the edifice of her fortunes that had been raised stone
by stone patiently and slowly: this edifice was now undermined and
threatened to fall in a single day. It was the sudden apparition of
Friar Robert, who followed to the court of Rome his young pupil, who
from infancy had been Joan's destined husband, which thus shattered all
the designs of the Catanese and seriously menaced her future. The monk
had not been slow to understand that so long as she remained at the
court, Andre would be no more than the slave, possibly even the
victim, of his wife. Thus all Friar Robert's thoughts were obstinately
concentrated on a single end, that of getting rid of the Catanese or
neutralising her influence. The prince's tutor and the governess of the
heiress had but to exchange one glance, icy, penetrating, plain to read:
their looks met like lightning flashes of hatred and of vengeance. The
Catanese, who felt she was detected, lacked courage to fight this man
in the open, and so conceived the hope of strengthening her tottering
empire by the arts of corruption and debauchery. She instilled by
degrees into her pupil's mind the poison of vice, inflamed her youthful
imagination with precocious desires, sowed in her heart the seeds of an