dangers—the love of Bertrand of Artois, the beauty of Louis of Taranto, and the ambition of Charles of Durazzo. So that, no sooner was King Robert dead, than his wishes in respect to the mutual sovereignty of Andrew and John were contemptuously put aside by those who proclaimed Joan, and Joan alone, as their new Queen to the Neapolitan people; but Joan’s acquiescence in their proclamation of her as sole sovereign cannot be overlooked, foreshadowing as it would almost seem to do some already half-formed instinctive project of becoming actually that which she had been proclaimed to be—the single occupant of the throne. Instantly, moreover, her Hungarian husband and his partisans, Father Robert, the Dominican Friar, together with divers Hungarian nobles and Giovanni Pipino, Count of Altamura, one of the most powerful lords of the kingdom and the most hated by the people, held counsel among themselves as to how they might best defeat the projects of the Queen’s party. This, they decided, could only be done by acquainting King Andrew’s mother, Elizabeth of Poland, and his brother, King Louis of Hungary, with the terms of King Robert’s last will, and of how a conspiracy had been set on foot to deprive King Andrew of his rightful share in the government of Naples. Also, a complaint in the same terms was to be sent to the Pope at Avignon, and a request made of the Holy Father that he would issue a Bull of coronation on King Andrew’s behalf, thereby duly confirming him in his rights of, at least, equal sovereignty with Joan, his wife. At the same time, Father Robert tried to impress upon Andrew the advisability of coming as soon as possible to some kind of understanding upon the subject with Joan herself before her favourites should have alienated her affections entirely from him. These favourites whom the good monk had in mind were some of them men and some of them women. Of the men—Robert of Cabano, Louis of Taranto, and Bertrand of Artois—we have already seen something; of the women we have as yet made acquaintance with only two—Filippa Cabano, the mother of Robert the half-breed, and formerly governess to the Princesses Joan and Mary; and the Empress of Constantinople, their aunt and the mother of Louis of Taranto and his brothers. Besides Donna Filippa and the Empress, however, there were three others who had influence over Joan—the Countesses of Terlizzi and Morcone, daughters of Donna Filippa, and, lastly and supremely, a young and lovely girl of sixteen, known simply as “Cancia,” who occupied, officially, the position of tiring-woman to the young Queen.