Don Pedro was no longer at liberty to treat with Charles, even had he wished it: the Sicilians, at least that party of them that had invoked his aid, had done so for their own ends, and would permit no transaction. The ambassadors returned to Charles and announced their ill success, and the King bade them repose till next morning, when he would speak further with them. But the next morning they learned that he and the Queen had left the camp during the night, and had embarked for Calabria. Many historians have severely blamed this retreat; M. de St Priest vindicates its wisdom and propriety. Defection was increasing in Charles's army, weary of a fruitless siege that had lasted seventy-four days, and he was in danger of being cut of from Calabria; for although he still had his fleet, it consisted of heavy, unwieldy transports, and was very unmanageable. Soon after his departure from Sicily it was destroyed and captured by the Arragonese fleet. He began also to form a juster estimate of his formidable adversary, whose politic and generous conduct contrasted with his own severity, often pushed to barbarity. He resolved to try a system of conciliation with the Sicilians; and, being too proud and stiff-necked to adopt it in person, he sent his son Charles, Prince of Salerno, to carry it out. "It was necessary to find a pretext in order honourably to absent himself. The customs of the time furnished him with one. He did not show himself their slave, as has often been said, but made them serve his purpose, and skilfully used them to mask the difficulties of his position. It was not, then, from a Quixotic and foolish impulse, unbecoming at his age, but with a political object,--in order to escape from the scene of his disappointments and defeats, and to draw his enemy from that of his victories and triumphs,--that he took the resolution to challenge Pedro of Arragon to single combat." A friar bore the cartel; Pedro accepted it; and this strange duel between two powerful kings was fixed to take place in a plain near Bordeaux, an English town, as the chroniclers call it, Bordeaux then belonging to Edward I. of England. Pending the preliminary negotiations and arrangements for this combat, hostilities continued, and the results were all in favour of Don Pedro. His natural son, Don Jaime Pâris, or Peres, admiral of the Catalan fleet, made a night excursion from Messina to Catona, upon the opposite coast, surprising and massacring five hundred French soldiers. Carried away by youthful ardour, he then pushed on to Reggio; but fell into an ambush, and lost a dozen men. Although the final result of the enterprise was highly satisfactory, Pâris returning victor with a rich booty, his father, indignant that his orders had been overstepped, spared his life only at the entreaties of his courtiers, degraded and banished him, and gave the command of the fleet to Ruggiero de Lauria. This was a lucky hit. Lauria, although