It does not appear that the young King took much interest in the matrimonial part of the negotiations. An unripe boy of sixteen would naturally be very much more affected by military prowess than by uxorious daintiness. The service of Mars was very much more to his liking than that of Venus, and he addressed himself zealously to the task of winning back his grandfather’s crown and sceptre, which his father had failed to retain. It was doubtless a daring enterprise for a youth to undertake, but we may be quite sure that he inherited not a little of his family’s well known fearlessness. Province was denuded of her garrisons, and Languedoc also; but no men could be spared from Anjou and Bar, and it was but the nucleus of an army which Queen Yolande reviewed at Marseilles, whither she went to bid adieu to her dearly loved son upon his adventurous career. [Illustration: COMMUNION OF A KNIGHT Sculpture from Interior, Western Façade, Reims Cathedral _To face page 74_] Louis sailed for Genoa, where he met the Duke of Savoy and took command of his contingent. He anchored in the Bay of Naples on August 15, 1420, a day full of favourable omens. On the voyage he fell in with the fleet of the King of Aragon, his rival for the crown of Naples, and worsted it. At once he went off to Aversa, where the Queen of Naples, Giovanna II., received him with open arms. His _naïveté_ delighted her, jaded as she was with the attentions of willing and unwilling aspirants for her favours. She created him Duke of Calabria, and proclaimed him her heir in lieu of the defeated and discredited Alfonso. It was a perilous position for the vigorous and gallant stripling Prince, but the counsels of his virtuous mother were not thrown away. The young King refused the amorous royal overtures successfully, and having kissed the Queen’s hand, he offered a plausible excuse, and speedily took his departure for Rome. The Supreme Pontiff extended to the youthful hero his paternal benediction, and detained him at the Vatican just long enough to invest him with the title of King of Naples, in place, as His Holiness wished, of the worthless and abandoned Queen. Thence Louis travelled on to Florence and Milan, and obtained promises of substantial assistance from their rulers against the pretensions of the King of Aragon. But to return to Anjou and the “good mother” there, the anxious and busy Queen Yolande.