least, he found himself in his native country and hereditary dominions; habit, tradition, old affinities, compensated what the supreme power lacked in strength and extent. In Sicily things were very different. The island was altogether in an unsatisfactory state. The chiefs of the aristocracy, the authors of the revolution, had all rebelled in turn. It had been found necessary to put to death Caltagirone, Alaimo de Lentini, and other leaders of the Arragonese intrigue. The air of Sicily seemed loaded with rebellious infection. Even Ruggiero de Lauria, and John of Procida,[9] were suspected of disaffection. Nor did the profits of the island compensate the anxiety it caused. Exhausted by war, Sicily yielded no revenue, but required support in men and money. More than this, the papal anathema still remained upon the family of Pedro of Arragon. It weighed upon Don Jaime and upon his mother Queen Constance. Courageous though she was, the daughter of the excommunicated Mainfroy, the widow of the excommunicated Pedro, had difficulty to support the interdict. Successive popes sustained the interests of the French dynasty, and bestowed the crown of Arragon, a fief of the holy see, upon Charles of Valois, brother of Philip le Bel. True, possession did not accompany the gift, to which the Arragonese did not subscribe, but drove back Philip the Bold when he tried to introduce his son into his new kingdom, an attempt which cost him his reputation and his life. Still Don Jaime was anxious, for various reasons, to have the donation annulled. To this end he addressed himself to the King of Naples, still prisoner at Barcelona, offering to give him up Sicily, and even to aid him to reconquer it, on condition that the Pope removed the interdict from his house, and that Charles of Valois was compelled to renounce the title of King of Arragon. Moreover, a matrimonial alliance, always an important tie, but especially so in the middle ages, was to seal the friendship of the two monarchs. Don Jaime was to marry the princess Blanche, eldest daughter of the King of Naples, and granddaughter of the great Charles of Anjou. Boniface VIII., greatly attached, at the commencement of his popedom, to the interests of France, joyfully acquiesced in these arrangements. [9] Procida died at an advanced old age, in his native province of Salerno, reconciled with the Pope and with the King of Naples, at enmity with Sicily, and re-established in his possessions by Charles II.--St Priest, vol. iv. p. 172.