Nothing, however, would suit her until René became her guest, and as such he went through all the weird experience of his elder brother. It mattered not to the Queen that he was a married man with a loving wife and dear children; what mattered to her was that he was good-looking, brave, and gallant. To be sure, René’s serious manner disconcerted her, and his artistic tastes bored her, but under his studious courtesy she tried to believe that he was hiding a lively response to her amorous advances. In the presence of “il galantuomo Re,”—by which term she always saluted Louis,—Giovanna named René second heir to her kingdom, and successor to the title and estates of the duchy of Calabria. She carefully refrained from inquiries about Duchess Isabelle; indeed, she ignored her existence altogether, and in this line of conduct she was quite consistent, for she had declined to receive the young Queen Margherita when Louis entered Naples with her in state.
René, however, was instrumental, whilst under the fascination of Queen Giovanna, in effecting two matters of importance for the kingdom of Naples and its people. She had instructed Giovanni Capistrani, a perfervid son of Rome, and at the same time an admirer of the Queen, whom she had appointed Court Chamberlain, to persecute the Jews and drive them away from Naples; all such as refused exile he was ordered to put to death. René interposed in the interpretation of these decrees, and gained the Queen’s consent to allow the persecuted race to remain on two conditions: (1) That they should not exact unjust usury; and (2) that they should be marked by a yellow cross to differentiate them from the Christian subjects of the Crown. René further suggested to Giovanna that the Church needed her patronage, that she herself would go the way of all flesh, and that some accommodation with Heaven was very desirable. The Queen laughed his counsel to scorn, and badgered him for a crusader and a churchling, but his words went home even to her hardened, sensuous heart. Capistrani’s unexpected action, moreover, greatly moved her; he resigned his Court offices and emoluments, and meekly entered a monastery of St. Francis d’Assisi.
Duke René returned to his prison at Dijon, and King Louis took his bride off to Cosenza, the capital of Calabria, where a second marriage was celebrated on August 15, 1433, to allay the scruples of prejudiced adherents of the Neapolitan throne. A rumour had been spread,—originating, it was said, with the Queen herself,—which affirmed that Margherita was not the wife, but the mistress, of the royal Duke! Eighteen short months of marital bliss were enjoyed by Louis and Margherita, broken, alas! by a fresh attack by Alfonso in force on Naples. A naval battle off Gaeta, 1434, ended disastrously for the fleet of Aragon. Arrayed against it were the allied forces of Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Milan. Alfonso and his brother Juan were taken prisoners, and carried off to Milan by Duke Filippo Maria. Then a blow fell on the young Queen and upon the whole kingdom of Naples, which made itself felt even in the morbid heart of Queen Giovanna. King Louis caught fever besieging the city of Taranto, and was borne swiftly off to Cosenza, where he died, in his own fond Queen’s arms, on November 15, 1434. Few Princes have made themselves so universally loved as Louis III. of Sicily and Naples, and never were there so many sad hearts and tearful eyes in the kingdom of Naples as when his beloved body was laid out for burial in the Cathedral of Cosenza.
Giovanna never again recovered her spirits; to be sure, she did not renounce her evil ways, but she set about in a hurry to put into execution Duke René’s suggestions. Among belated pious deeds, she rebuilt and refounded the Church of Santa Maria dell’ Annunziata by way of penance for her bad life, and there she was buried in front of the high-altar. A simple slab of marble points out, in the absence of a grandiose monument, the place of her sepulture. She died February 2, 1435, and no woman wept for her, and no man felt grieved. If it is true that “the evil which men do dies with them,” then we must not rake up the tainting memories of an evil past. Giovanna II., Queen of Naples, has passed to her last account, and before Heaven’s tribunal will she stand, alongside with the victims of her vampire-love. Faraglia, in his “Storia della Regina Giovanna II. d’Angio,” makes a brave attempt to whitewash the character of the Queen, and he records many interesting details in her daily life. “Every morning,” he says, “she rose with the sun, spent one hour at Mass and private devotions; then she applied herself to the study of music and literature; at noon she breakfasted, generally alone, the afternoon she gave to exercise, and before dinner she bathed in a bath supplied with the milk of one hundred asses.” Apparently the Queen gave no time to affairs of State, and she had not much leisure for company. Undoubtedly Queen Giovanna was the friend of art and craft, but only so far as their exponents helped to enhance her own attractions and luxuries. Antonio Solario—“Il Zingaro”—was her favourite painter, and, by the oddest of irrational conventions, he has represented her in an altar-piece as the Virgin Mary with the Infant Christ, and surrounded by a court of saints!
With what feelings the news of the death of Louis III. at Cosenza was received by René in his prison chamber at Tour de Bar we may well imagine. The hold of his house upon the kingdom of Naples was, of course, of the weakest; and if the late King upon the spot, free to move what troops and stores he had at will, was unable to retain command of Naples, how could a captive Prince away in Burgundy hope to enforce successfully his claim as his brother’s heir?
In Provence and Anjou and beyond the borders of his dominions, with Bar and Lorraine, and with the sympathy and assistance of friendly Sovereigns and Princes at home and abroad, he had, of course, numberless loyal subjects, friends, and allies, but among them all not one could enthuse his cause as he could himself in person. Three devoted Princesses,—Yolande, Isabelle, and Marguerite,—were doing all they could to free him from his captivity. Their efforts were in the schools of sympathy and politics, but they could not lead troops or command a victorious army. No doubt René was depressed and in despair at the apparent paralysis of all effective assistance. Then came the crushing intelligence that Giovanna, the Queen of Naples, was dead, and that he (René) was de facto King. This must have made him desperate. He had no resources, and there appeared no possibility of his obtaining possession of his rights. How he chafed and fumed as he paced his spacious chamber, and how defiantly he must have gazed through its barred windows and at its closed door! Duke René’s brain must have reeled.
Relief, however, came in quite an unexpected sort of way. One morning the bolts of his door were noisily shot back, and upon the threshold he beheld two foreign gentlemen unknown to him. They knelt and kissed his hand; then they offered him a permit from the Duke of Burgundy, a sealed letter from Duchess (now Queen) Isabelle, and a great official despatch from the lately deceased Queen Giovanna. The two emissaries were devoted adherents to the House of Anjou-Provence—Baron Charles de Montelar and Signore Vidal di Cabarus. They came, as their credentials ordered, directly from the deathbed of the Queen, to tell him from her that, “for the sake of the love I had for King Louis,—now, alas! departed,—I chose his noble brother René as my heir and successor. Long live King René!” Into his hand the two gentlemen delivered the Sovereign’s medallion and its royal chain of gold, and again they did obeisance to their new Sovereign.
René accepted their homage chivalrously, if sorrowfully, but his eye wandered to the smaller packet held by di Cabarus, for he saw it was addressed to him in his dear wife’s handwriting. Tearing open the cover, he read with tears in his eyes the startling news that—
“Even whilst thou, my fond spouse, readest these presents, I, thy loyal wife and royal consort, am setting off at once, well mounted and numerously attended, to Marseilles to take shipping for Naples, there to receive in thy name the homage of the Estates and to assume the government. I am taking with me our second boy, Louis, with Yolande and Marguerite, to show them to thy Neapolitan subjects, but Jean I shall send to thee to comfort thee, by the grace of the Duke of Burgundy. My sweet mother will accompany him to cheer thee and to tell thee of my good estate. Fare thee well, beloved.