to a balcony, which overlooked a garden, and from that he was hung by a cord, which, according to Dumas's narrative, was made by his wife of silk and gold.

No sooner was this murder accomplished, than Charles of Durazzo, who had acted in it by secret agents alone and was left at liberty to espouse what party he pleased, placed himself at the head of the Hungarians; to excite the indignation of whom he kept exposed for two entire days, the body of poor Andreas. The semi-savages, devoted to their master, could utter but one cry, and that was a cry for vengeance: while Charles, availing himself of his power, and being, in right of his wife Maria, heir to the throne of Naples in case Giovanna should die without issue, attempted to exercise an absolute sway over the queen, exacting from her that she should not marry again without his consent, and should make him Duke of Calabria, the title which had been borne by her father. Giovanna writhed beneath the insolence of her haughty relation, and the Empress Catherine, by a detestable scheme, offered to avenge her wrongs. Charles of Durazzo was made to believe that his mother, long since a widow, was pregnant, and to remove the stain from the family honour, he became à matricide, murdering the only virtuous woman that existed in one of the most profligate courts that the world has ever known. But Charles, though cast down, was not crushed; and the revenge he took on those of his enemies of the court who fell within his reach, was attended with all that refinement of cruelty which would lead us to believe that the tyrants of the middle ages were epicures in their vindictiveness. Taking upon himself the character of avenger of Andreas, he found an easy ally in the pope, and a bull was addressed to the justiciary of Sicily, ordering him to proceed with the utmost severity against the murderers. At the same time the pope was not so thorough an abettor as Charles could have desired; for he gave secret directions to the justiciary, perfectly in accordance with the principles of the time, to reserve his tortures for the more humble participators in the crime, while those of the blood-royal were to pass unnoticed.

Then began the series of horrors to which the murder of Andreas was the horrible introduction. The unfortunate criminals-that is to say, those whom the justiciary was alone allowed to touchwere tortured against the mast of a galley, to the great diversion. of the people in general, and of Charles of Durazzo in particular, who was in all his glory, and wore a black garment to feign sorrow for the murdered Hungarian. Joyfully would he have heard the denunciation of the royal assassins from the humbler culprits; every moment was to him a moment of vindictive expectation; but the cunning justiciary had attached a fish-hook to

the tongue (!) of each of the victims, and no matter how their fortitude might quail beneath the tortures which were inflicted upon them, they were at least prevented from doing any mischief by their confessions. The governess and all her family,-the son to whom she had betrayed Giovanna, her two daughters, the eldest not above nineteen, and their husbands,—were all executed: and as they had before been tortured on the pretext of extorting a confession, so were they now, in mere wantonness, tortured on their way to the burning pile, amid the savage exultations of the populace, who at last dragged their bones from the blazing heap to make trinkets in memory of the occasion.

But the great culprits did not escape with impunity. Providence seems to have marked out destruction for all who were concerned in the death of the uncouth, and unpolished, but innocent Andreas. Bertrand and Giovanna at once became disgusted with each other, from their participation in the horrible crime, and the affections of the queen were transferred to Louis of Tarento, the younger son of the Empress Catherine. Again was Naples torn into two factions, at the head of one of which was Charles of Durazzo, while Louis led the other. Louis himself was unconnected with the murder of Andreas; but his mother had been one of the leaders of the conspiracy, nor did she show any inclination to recede from her career of guilt. Her son needing money to resist his formidable opponent, the readiest expedient was to plunder the old Count of Artois, Charles, who on the first outbreak of vengeance against the murderers of Andreas had fled to the fortress of St. Agatha. Catherine undertook the delicate mission; visited the fortress at the head of a party of soldiers; robbed the wealthy old man of the whole of his vast property, at the loss of which he died of a broken heart; while his son. Bertrand, the former paramour of Giovanna, hanged himself.

Though by this audacious proceeding the court party suddenly found themselves possessed of immense wealth, their difficulties were not over yet. Charles of Durazzo, acting as Ludovico of Milan did in a subsequent age, and with equal want of foresight, invited Louis king of Hungary, the elder brother of Andreas, into Naples, hoping that he had secured an ally, whereas he had only attained a destroyer. The entrance of Louis of Hungary was one of those events which have been considered as Scourges for the punishment of a guilty race. The court of Naples trembled at his approach: Giovanna presented Louis of Tarento to her barons as her husband, and made them take the oath of fidelity to him; but the army of Hungary progressed, and

was not to be retarded in the work of vengeance. No sooner had the Hungarian reached Benevento, than envoys from Naples waited upon him to swear their allegiance, and the unhappy Giovanna and her husband Louis fled for Provence. At Aversa, the scene of the murder of Andreas, did Charles of Durazzo and Robert of Tarento, as the eldest representatives of two branches of the royal family, meet Louis of Hungary, with all the desire of further conciliating him by the most implicit obedience. They were received with the greatest civility and kindness, and Charles of Durazzo was completely blinded to the fate that was prepared for him. In vain had he been as secret as possible in furthering the designs of the conspirators against Andreas; in vain had he most forcibly disclaimed connexion with them, by inflicting tortures on all that he could reach: the King of Hungary regarded him as his brother's murderer, and, entrapped at Aversa, he was beheaded by Hungarian soldiers under circumstances which would call for pity, were not the sentiment utterly unfitted for this disgrace to the human species. On went the King of Hungary like an Attila in miniature. His entry into Naples was a triumph, and the most wholesale vengeance on the enemies of his brother attended it. Razors, wheels, and red-hot pincers, the curse of the middle ages and the delight_of M. Dumas, were again in requisition; and the means which Durazzo had used partly as a feint, were adopted with a thorough sense of enjoyment by the avenger of the north.

During this time, Provence was the scene of a triumph of another kind. The beauty, the misfortunes of Giovanna, had conspired to give her an interest in this native land of poetry and romance. At Avignon the reception of her and her husband was magnificent: songs to her praise were chanted in her path; the bells rang as at a solemn festival of the church; the pope, Clement VI., gave the warmest welcome : and in short the reception was such as should have been offered to a spirit descended from a purer region, rather than to one on whom suspicion, at least, had fixed a murder, which even in an age used to horrors had been regarded as an act of unparalleled atrocity. As if these honours were not enough, a still greater triumph awaited her: and the endeavour of her terrible enemy of Hungary to destroy, only made her shine forth with greater lustre. King Louis sent ambassadors to Avignon to demand the condemnation of the queen; and the heroine, for so she must be called, pleaded her own cause. The pope was the judge, the ambassadors from Hungary were the accusers, and all the ambassadors from Europe were present at this wonderful trial.

"Her gait," says Dumas, "was at once so modest and so proud, her brow so melancholy and so pure, her look so full of abandon and of confidence, that all hearts were on her side before she spoke. Giovanna was then twenty years of age, was in the full bloom of her magnificent beauty; but the brilliancy of her transparent satin skin was tempered by extreme paleness, and her sunken cheeks bore the marks of suffering and remorse. She spoke with a voice trembling with emotion, stopping from time to time to dry her moistened and brilliant eyes, or to heave one of those sighs which go directly to the heart. With such a lively grief did she recount the death of her husband, with such frightful truth did she depict the utter confusion with which she had been seized, and with such energy of despair did she clasp her hands to her forehead as if distracted at the terrible event, that the whole assembly trembled with horror and compassion. And indeed, at this moment, if her recital was false, her anger was real and terrible. An angel blasted by crime, she lied like Satan, but also, like Satan, she was torn by the infinite tortures of pride and of remorse."

The result of the affair was that Giovanna was declared innocent; that her marriage, which had been a very doubtful union, was confirmed by the pope; and that the Hungarian ambassadors retired in confusion. The plague, of which Boccacio has left us so complete a description, was a new ally in the cause of Giovanna; as it frightened the King of Hungary out of Naples, where already the execrations of an oppressed people had reached to such a height that he had cause to tremble for his safety. The affection of the Neapolitans for their beautiful queen now ripened into an open declaration in her favour, and Naples echoed with the cry of "Long live Giovanna! Down with the Hungarians!" Yet these favours of fortune were but temporary; the King of Hungary again triumphed; he returned to attack his rival, and Giovanna was once more in peril. Louis of Tarento, who had much of that chivalrous generosity which was the only virtue of this detestable age, challenged the rival Louis to single combat, hoping thus to save the life of his subjects. The Hungarian, as a preux chevalier, could not refuse the challenge, but he contrived to make it a nullity by starting difficulties as to the judges before whom the combat should take place. His army continued victorious; he entered Naples as a conqueror; but he again found his most formidable opponent in the devotion of the people to their sovereign, and with dominion apparently in his grasp, he was driven to make a peace with Giovanna, on no other condition than that she should pay the expenses of the war.

But Giovanna, though she survived the unfortunate Andreas many years, was not to find a time of repose. The rebellion of Louis of Durazzo occupied Louis of Tarento, who no sooner

triumphed over him, and made him a prisoner for life, than he himself fell a victim to a life of indulgence. Jaimè of Aragon, son of the king of Majorca, and Otho of Brunswick, were then successively husbands of Giovanna, who, in the lifetime of the latter, lost all her influence by supporting the anti-pope Clement VII. against Urban VI. The people were now against her. Urban declared that her crown was forfeited, and assigned it to a younger Charles of Durazzo, the son of Louis, whom she had preserved when his father perished miserably in a dungeon. Gratitude was as nothing when ambition prompted. Charles being now the conqueror, wrote to the King of Hungary to know what was to be done with Queen Giovanna, and the result was, according to the common account, that she was smothered by a feather-bed, and according to the more artificial narrative of Dumas, that she was strangled with the silken cord which she had made for Andreas.

This mass of crimes, connected with the death of Andreas; this complication of deceit, cruelty, and lust; is viewed through a dim medium: it is a horrible drama that is acted in the far distance: but on the next heroes of Dumas that is next in point of date, for they are the first in the order of his work-the infamous Borgia Family, the light of history shines clearly.

The period at which this viperine brood played its fantastic tricks is as nearly as possible the transition between the middle ages and modern history: and certainly, if there be any one who talks of "good old times" under the impression that by retrograding a few centuries he will find virtue advancing in a proportionate degree, he will do well to ponder over the history of the Borgias, whose villanies were not transacted in secret, but in an arena round which sat the whole civilized world, who regarded the frightful exploits with more or less applause. A king of France (Louis XII.) could be found living to patronize a wretch like Cesar Borgia; and the historian of Florence, though he shuddered with pious horror at the deeds of Agathocles and Vitelli Vitellozzo, mentioned, in the chapter of his "Principe" immediately preceding, the Duke of Valentinois as a perfectly wise prince: unlucky to be sure, and on one occasion committing a blunder, which with Machiavelli, as with Fouché, was worse than a crime: but still on the whole highly to be commended. The unholy trio-Pope Alexander VI. who had gained the chair of St. Peter by the most unblushing simony, his daughter Lucrezia, and his son Cesar were a choice assemblage, who had assumed a right to indulge in all the odious want of faith of miserable modern intriguers, as well as in all the odious excesses and nameless vices