On leaving Avignon, what was her delight on seeing the beloved Louis of Taranto come out to meet her, accompanied by all the Cardinals then in attendance upon the Pope! Joan was now, indeed, greeted as a Queen by her people, who strewed the way with flowers, the while a number of mounted pages rode beside the royal pair, holding above them a canopy of crimson velvet; and, from every church the bells pealed out a welcome to the Sovereigns. In the castle they were received with all pomp and circumstance by the Holy Father, who embraced and blessed them; after which they took up their residence in the Ursuline convent; and a little later, to complete the gladness of Joan, her younger sister, Maria, now the mother of two baby girls, arrived at Avignon from the stricken city of Naples. After the death of her husband in the castle of Aversa, Maria, bearing her children in her arms, had taken refuge from the reprisals of the King of Hungary in the monastery of Santa Croce, where the monks took her in and fed and sheltered her during some days, although they knew that not only their lives but the existence of the monastery itself would fall a sacrifice to the Hungarian’s anger should he ever learn of their charity to the widow of Charles of Durazzo. At length she had contrived, thanks to the disguise of an old monastic gown, to embark with her babies upon a ship bound for Provence; and her account of the things that were being done by the Hungarian in Naples made both Joan and her husband long to get back there with an army behind them, that they, in their turn, might satisfy their vengeance. About this time there arrived, too, at Avignon ambassadors from the King of Hungary to the Pope, demanding in no measured terms the formal condemnation of Joan as an accessory before the fact to the murder of her husband, and her deposition from the throne of Naples; and, most especially, that the Holy Father should give the kingdom instead to Louis of Hungary. And now the Pope appointed a day for Joan on which to plead her cause before him and to disprove the charges made against her if she could; and this she did so ably that those who heard her broke into loud applause, and the Pope pronounced her innocent before all the world, and the Hungarian envoys were compelled to go away empty—although, to this day, there are those who have their doubts as to the veracity of Joan’s denial of the sin imputed to her. At any rate, Pope Clement, who was a good and truth-loving Pontiff, believed her, and there is an end of it. After the discomfiture of the Hungarians, the Pope confirmed the marriage of the Queen to her cousin, Louis of Taranto, and bestowed upon the latter the title of King of Naples and of Jerusalem; he had already, on March 27, given him the Golden Rose. Simultaneously, the Holy Father sent an apostolic legate, Cardinal de Boulogne, to the King of Hungary, at Naples, to persuade him to cede the kingdom peaceably to its rightful sovereigns.