favourite painter, and, by the oddest of irrational conventions, he has represented her in an altar-piece as the Virgin Mary with the Infant Christ, and surrounded by a court of saints! With what feelings the news of the death of Louis III. at Cosenza was received by René in his prison chamber at Tour de Bar we may well imagine. The hold of his house upon the kingdom of Naples was, of course, of the weakest; and if the late King upon the spot, free to move what troops and stores he had at will, was unable to retain command of Naples, how could a captive Prince away in Burgundy hope to enforce successfully his claim as his brother’s heir? In Provence and Anjou and beyond the borders of his dominions, with Bar and Lorraine, and with the sympathy and assistance of friendly Sovereigns and Princes at home and abroad, he had, of course, numberless loyal subjects, friends, and allies, but among them all not one could enthuse his cause as he could himself in person. Three devoted Princesses,--Yolande, Isabelle, and Marguerite,--were doing all they could to free him from his captivity. Their efforts were in the schools of sympathy and politics, but they could not lead troops or command a victorious army. No doubt René was depressed and in despair at the apparent paralysis of all effective assistance. Then came the crushing intelligence that Giovanna, the Queen of Naples, was dead, and that he (René) was _de facto_ King. This must have made him desperate. He had no resources, and there appeared no possibility of his obtaining possession of his rights. How he chafed and fumed as he paced his spacious chamber, and how defiantly he must have gazed through its barred windows and at its closed door! Duke René’s brain must have reeled. Relief, however, came in quite an unexpected sort of way. One morning the bolts of his door were noisily shot back, and upon the threshold he beheld two foreign gentlemen unknown to him. They knelt and kissed his hand; then they offered him a permit from the Duke of Burgundy, a sealed letter from Duchess (now Queen) Isabelle, and a great official despatch from the lately deceased Queen Giovanna. The two emissaries were devoted adherents to the House of Anjou-Provence--Baron Charles de Montelar and Signore Vidal di Cabarus. They came, as their credentials ordered, directly from the deathbed of the Queen, to tell him from her that, “for the sake of the love I had for King Louis,--now, alas! departed,--I chose his noble brother René as my heir and successor. Long live King René!” Into his hand the two gentlemen delivered the Sovereign’s medallion and its royal chain of gold, and again they did obeisance to their new Sovereign. René accepted their homage chivalrously, if sorrowfully, but his eye wandered to the smaller packet held by di Cabarus, for he saw it was addressed to him in his dear wife’s handwriting. Tearing open the cover, he read with tears in his eyes the startling news that--