Surely this is confirmation strong of the truth of the tradition! Unfortunately, church, inscription, and statue are all of a recent date. The events just detailed left Charles of Anjou at the pinnacle of power and greatness. The magnitude of the danger he had run added to the lustre of his triumph. Nothing now resisted him; he might almost be styled the master of Italy. Every where the Guelfs drove the Ghibellines before them; every where the Swabian eagle fled before the red and silver lilies. The cause of the Ghibellines was lost. The fortunate conqueror was on every point successful. His domestic prosperity kept pace with his political and military success. Charles, then forty-two years old, beheld himself surrounded by a numerous posterity. He had two sons and three daughters. His queen, Beatrix of Provence, was dead; but soon he contracted a second marriage with the young and beautiful Margaret of Burgundy. Nature herself seemed to favour him; for in the short space of three years, all his enemies, in any way formidable, disappeared from the scene. Amongst others, the valiant and adventurous Corrado Capece, taken prisoner by the implacable Guillaume de l’Estendard, had his eyes put out, and was hung upon a gibbet of extraordinary altitude, erected for the purpose upon the coast of Catania. The Saracens of Lucera still held out. Besieged by a powerful army, with Charles at its head, they resisted for six months, till reduced to eat hay and roots. The bodies of stragglers from the town being opened by the besiegers, only grass was found in their bellies. At last they gave in. Charles, with a wise policy, showed them mercy, contenting himself with banishing them from Lucera, and distributing them amongst the towns of the interior. Although the piety of the first French king of Sicily was carried almost to an exaggerated extent, it did not degenerate into fanaticism; at least not into that fanaticism which engenders persecution. He never adopted the prejudices of the time against the Jews; on the contrary, he delivered them from the hands of state inquisitors, and suppressed the distinctive mark they were compelled to wear upon their garments. Financial considerations may not improbably have stimulated, at least as much as the dictates of reason and humanity, this enlightened spirit of tolerance; but still it is to the credit of Charles that he did not, like many very Christian kings and nobles of his and subsequent centuries, smite the Israelite with one hand whilst stripping him with the other. The King of Jerusalem was merciful to his subjects. Charles it was who first added this title to that of King of Sicily, by purchase from the old Princess Mary of Antioch, who called herself Mademoiselle de Jerusalem, and claimed that crown, then little more than a name. When Charles, for a pension of four thousand _livres tournois_, acquired her rights, he hastened to vindicate them. They were disputed by Henry, King of Cyprus, who had the