There is no evidence that this meteoric lady ever lived in this house that she had built, although she was Countess of Provence as well as Queen of Naples. It was from no indisposition to travel on her part, for she was never quiet and never in one place long, not even when she was in prison. Flitting about from Provence to Naples took up no little of her time, and when she was not occupied on these journeys she was either pursuing her enemies or being, in turn, pursued by them. In the language of the history book she “flourished” in the fourteenth century. The expression is ineffective, for she “blazed” rather than flourished. She was the political fidget of her time. A beautiful and passionate woman, she traversed the shores of the Mediterranean like a whirlwind. Her adventures would occupy the longest film of the most sensational picture theatre. Tragedy and violent domestic scenes became her most; but wherever she went there circled around her the makings of a drama of some kind. All the materials for a moving story were present. The scene was laid in feudal times when the license of the great was unrestrained. The heroine was a pretty woman who fascinated everyone who came in her path. She was, moreover, a wayward lady of ability and wide ambitions who was quite unscrupulous, who felt herself never called upon to keep her word and who was determined to get whatever she wanted. She had a somewhat immoderate taste for matrimony, since she was a widow four times and would probably have married a fifth husband had not a friend of her youth strangled her when she was in prison. Her selection of husbands was catholic, as the list of men she chose will show. They were, in the order in which they died, Andrew of Hungary, Louis of Tarentum, James of Majorca, and Otto of Brunswick. She was charged with having murdered her first husband. The charge was pressed by popular clamour and she was tried, in great state, in her own town of Avignon, in Provence, in the year 1348. The Pope himself presided. At the trial she is said to have made a deep impression on the court. She startled this august assembly of solemn men. They saw in her a woman full of the tenderest charm. They were moved by her grace, by her ease of manner, by the sweetness of her voice, by her pathos-stirring eloquence, and—strangest of all—by her remarkable knowledge of Latin. She was acquitted and then publicly blessed by the Pope. Her loyal subjects at Naples were not satisfied with this tribunal. They wanted their queen tried over again. They were rather proud of her and they liked revelations of palace life. Probably too they knew a little more than had “come out” at Avignon. Anyhow, the Pope was compelled again to proclaim her innocent, and, being a man of the world and anxious to put himself in the right, he added that even if she _had_ murdered her husband she had been the victim of witchcraft and sorcery and so was not responsible for her actions.