Joan, consumed by remorse, full of indignation and shame at the arrogant
conduct of her subjects, dared scarcely lift her head, and stooped to
entreaties, only stipulating for a few days' delay before giving her
answer: the empress consented, on condition that her son should come
to reside at Castel Nuovo, with permission to see the queen once a day.
Joan bowed her head in silence, and Robert of Tarentum was installed at
the castle.

Charles of Durazzo, who by the death of Andre had practically become the
head of the family, and, would, by the terms of his grandfather's will,
inherit the kingdom by right of his wife Marie in the case of Joan's
dying without lawful issue, sent to the queen two commands: first,
that she should not dream of contracting a new marriage without first
consulting him in the choice of a husband; secondly, that she should
invest him at once with the title of Duke of Calabria. To compel his
cousin to make these two concessions, he added that if she should be so
ill advised as to refuse either of them, he should hand over to justice
the proofs of the crime and the names of the murderers. Joan, bending
beneath the weight of this new difficulty, could think of no way to
avoid it; but Catherine, who alone was stout enough to fight this nephew
of hers, insisted that they must strike at the Duke of Durazzo in his
ambition and hopes, and tell him, to begin with--what was the fact--that
the queen was pregnant. If, in spite of this news, he persisted in his
plans, she would find some means or other, she said, of causing trouble
and discord in her nephew's family, and wounding him in his most
intimate affections or closest interests, by publicly dishonouring him
through his wife or his mother.

Charles smiled coldly when his aunt came to tell him from the queen
that she was about to bring into the world an infant, Andre's posthumous