Duke René returned to his prison at Dijon, and King Louis took his bride off to Cosenza, the capital of Calabria, where a second marriage was celebrated on August 15, 1433, to allay the scruples of prejudiced adherents of the Neapolitan throne. A rumour had been spread,--originating, it was said, with the Queen herself,--which affirmed that Margherita was not the wife, but the mistress, of the royal Duke! Eighteen short months of marital bliss were enjoyed by Louis and Margherita, broken, alas! by a fresh attack by Alfonso in force on Naples. A naval battle off Gaeta, 1434, ended disastrously for the fleet of Aragon. Arrayed against it were the allied forces of Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Milan. Alfonso and his brother Juan were taken prisoners, and carried off to Milan by Duke Filippo Maria. Then a blow fell on the young Queen and upon the whole kingdom of Naples, which made itself felt even in the morbid heart of Queen Giovanna. King Louis caught fever besieging the city of Taranto, and was borne swiftly off to Cosenza, where he died, in his own fond Queen’s arms, on November 15, 1434. Few Princes have made themselves so universally loved as Louis III. of Sicily and Naples, and never were there so many sad hearts and tearful eyes in the kingdom of Naples as when his beloved body was laid out for burial in the Cathedral of Cosenza. Giovanna never again recovered her spirits; to be sure, she did not renounce her evil ways, but she set about in a hurry to put into execution Duke René’s suggestions. Among belated pious deeds, she rebuilt and refounded the Church of Santa Maria dell’ Annunziata by way of penance for her bad life, and there she was buried in front of the high-altar. A simple slab of marble points out, in the absence of a grandiose monument, the place of her sepulture. She died February 2, 1435, and no woman wept for her, and no man felt grieved. If it is true that “the evil which men do dies with them,” then we must not rake up the tainting memories of an evil past. Giovanna II., Queen of Naples, has passed to her last account, and before Heaven’s tribunal will she stand, alongside with the victims of her vampire-love. Faraglia, in his “_Storia della Regina Giovanna II. d’Angio_,” makes a brave attempt to whitewash the character of the Queen, and he records many interesting details in her daily life. “Every morning,” he says, “she rose with the sun, spent one hour at Mass and private devotions; then she applied herself to the study of music and literature; at noon she breakfasted, generally alone, the afternoon she gave to exercise, and before dinner she bathed in a bath supplied with the milk of one hundred asses.” Apparently the Queen gave no time to affairs of State, and she had not much leisure for company. Undoubtedly Queen Giovanna was the friend of art and craft, but only so far as their exponents helped to enhance her own attractions and luxuries. Antonio Solario--“Il Zingaro”--was her