A consideration of the life of the Countess Matilda points to the fact that there was but this one woman in all Italy at this time who _knew_ enough to take advantage of her opportunities and play a great role upon the active stage of life. Many years were to pass before it could enter the popular conception that all women were to be given their chance at a fuller life, and even yet in sunny Italy, there is much to do for womankind. Then, as now, the skies were blue, and the sun was bright and warm; then, as now, did the peasants dance and sing all the way from water-ribbed Venice to fair and squalid Naples, but with a difference. Now, there is a measure of freedom to each and all--then, justice was not only blind but went on crutches, and women were made to suffer because they were women and because they could not defend, by force, their own. Still, there is comfort in the fact that from this dead level of mediocrity and impotence, one woman, the great Countess of Tuscany, was able to rise up and show herself possessed of a great heart, a great mind, and a great soul; and in her fullness of achievement, there was rich promise for the future. CHAPTER II THE NEAPOLITAN COURT IN THE TIME OF QUEEN JOANNA If you drive along the beautiful shore of the Mergellina to-day, beneath the high promontory of Pausilipo, to the southwest of Naples, you will see there in ruins the tumbling rocks and stones of an unfinished palace, with the blue sea breaking over its foundations; and that is still called the palace of Queen Joanna. In the church of Saint Chiara at Naples, this Queen Joanna was buried, and there her tomb may be seen to-day. Still is she held in memory dear, and still is her name familiar to the lips of the people. On every hand are to be seen the monuments of her munificence, and if you ask a Neapolitan in the street who built this palace or that church, the answer is almost always the same--"Our Queen Joanna." Who was this well-beloved queen, when did she live, and why is she still held in this affectionate regard by the present residents of sunny Naples? To answer all these questions it will be necessary to go back to a much earlier day in the history of this southern part of the Italian peninsula--a day when Naples was the centre of a royal government of no little importance in the eyes of the mediaeval world.