Charles of Durazzo received a personal invitation from Prince Andrew to join him and the others of the party, but declined on the ground of his wife’s being extremely indisposed; this, the last meeting on earth of the two men, took place on August 19 in the year 1345, towards evening in a hall of the Castel Nuovo. It is said that, in declining Andrew’s invitation, Charles begged him to accept a very fine falcon from among those for which his perch was justly celebrated. The falcon presented by Charles to Andrew may have been a jer-falcon, but I cannot help thinking that in all likelihood the bird was a peregrine from the cliffs between Sorrento and Amalfi. With Charles was also Nicholas of Melazzo, from whom he had just been receiving the details of the Queen’s conspiracy; and Charles, as he himself understood triumphantly, was thenceforth to be master of the situation in the Kingdom of Naples. The dawn of the next day saw a numerous cavalcade pass out from the gate of the Castel Nuovo, and file slowly down through the city and so out into the misty lowlands towards Melito, where the sport was to begin. The illustrious company was headed by Andrew of Hungary in person, and beside him rode Queen Joan on a white palfrey; whilst close behind them pressed the throng of those who had sworn to return to Naples only when Andrew should have ceased to breathe. Never before had Andrew shown himself so gay, so responsive to all the delights of life and friendship as on that morning; although he knew that he, as well as the men who rode behind him, had death in his heart—the death of many among those very men who were now preparing to consummate their treachery by murdering him. But they, like Andrew of Hungary, were loud in talk and laughter, exchanging jests incessantly amongst themselves and even, now and again, with their victim himself as he turned in his saddle and threw back to them a challenge of wits. Of all that festive throng two alone rode silent and preoccupied. Both were women. One of them, the Queen, kept her eyes fixed steadfastly on the landscape before her from which the vapours were being rapidly scattered and dispelled by the sunrise, so that none might read her thoughts; whilst the other was an elderly German called Isolda, once the nurse of Andrew and now his mother’s ambassador, who, like Queen Joan, was too occupied with her own reflections to pay attention to what was going on about her. For old Isolda’s heart was heavy with an indefinable presentiment of some evil that threatened her beloved foster-child; and her powerlessness to analyse or to avert it was frightful to the faithful soul of her.