no blushes before your noble family; confess, my lord, that I am with
child by your Excellency; and you know how we managed to make up the
story of poor Agnes of Durazzo and her pregnancy--God rest her soul! For
my part, I never supposed the joke would take such a serious turn all at
once. You know all this and much more; spare your lamentations, for, by
my word, they are getting very tiresome: let us prepare to die joyously,
as we have lived."

With these words she yawned slightly, and, lying down on the straw, fell
into a deep sleep, and dreamed as happy dreams as she had ever dreamed
in her life.

On the morrow from break of day there was an immense crowd on the sea
front. During the night an enormous palisade had been put up to keep
the people away far enough for them to see the accused without hearing
anything. Charles of Durazzo, at the head of a brilliant cortege of
knights and pages, mounted on a magnificent horse, all in black, as a
sign of mourning, waited near the enclosure. Ferocious joy shone in his
eyes as the accused made their way through the crowd, two by two, their
wrists tied with ropes; for the duke every minute expected to hear the
queen's name spoken. But the chief-justice, a man of experience, had
prevented indiscretion of any kind by fixing a hook in the tongue of
each one. The poor creatures were tortured on a ship, so that nobody
should hear the terrible confessions their sufferings dragged from them.

But Joan, in spite of the wrongs that most of the conspirators had done
her, felt a renewal of pity for the woman she had once respected as a
mother, for her childish companions and her friends, and possibly also
some remains of love for Robert of Cabane, and sent two messengers to
beg Bertram de Baux to show mercy to the culprits. But the chief-justice