“Oh, why does your Highness refuse to listen to me?” he whispered. “Fly—fly—there is still time to save yourself.” But Charles, irritated by Lillo’s persistency, threatened, unless he held his peace, to repeat his words aloud to the King; and Lillo could only bow in submission, whispering as he did so: “At least, I have done my duty; and now may the will of God be done, likewise, in regard to you.” At that moment the King rose and confronted Charles with a terrible countenance; so that the latter was now, at last, rudely awakened from his dream of security. “Ah, traitor, now I hold you in my hand!” cried the King. “Be sure that I will do justice upon you—full justice—for your crimes—your daring to march against my city of Aquila—you, by whose invitation I came to give peace to this miserable land that has groaned so long beneath the burden of you and yours.” He then went on to reproach Charles with having been, together with his mother’s brother, Cardinal de Périgord, the means of postponing the coronation of Andrew, and so of bringing him to his untimely end; furthermore he accused Charles of designing to obtain the kingdom for himself by his abductive marriage with the Princess Maria, his own, King Louis’, intended bride; which last delinquency had all along rankled fearfully in the King’s mind, so that as he referred to it his voice broke into a shout of fury. And then turning away from the excuses and pleadings for mercy of his victim, he ordered the Voivode, Stephen of Transylvania, to take charge of all the prisoners and to keep them for the night in a room near his, the King’s, own apartment. The next day King Louis, having visited that balcony in the Castle of Averna from which the dead body of his brother Andrew had been hanged and then thrown into the garden below, sent an order to the Voivode Stephen that he was to have Charles of Durazzo brought by soldiers to that same place and that they were to cut his throat; but the King himself did not stay to witness the execution. And when word of the King’s order was brought to the Voivode he told Charles to follow him, and, together with some soldiers, they went out to the room of the balcony. There the Voivode asked of Charles whether he wished to confess his sins to a priest, who answered in the affirmative, and so one of the monks came to him from the monastery and heard his confession, and absolved him in so far as he was able to do. After which Duke Charles knelt down over against the fatal balcony and commended his poor soul to God, and was killed by having a very sharp knife drawn across his throat (so that his head was nearly severed from his body) by one of the soldiers, whilst another plunged a sword into his heart that he might die quickly. And when the thing was done they threw the dead body of the Duke over the balcony into the garden.