Pontiff, and your just demands.  He behaved with incredible insolence.  Susa, or Damascus, the capital of the Saracens, would have received with more respect an envoy from the Holy See.  The great lords imitate his pride and tyranny.  The Bishop of Cavaillon is the only one who opposes this torrent; but what can one lamb do in the midst of so many wolves?  It is the request of a dying king alone that makes him endure so wretched a situation.  How small are the hopes of my negotiation! but I shall wait with patience; though I know beforehand the answer they will give me.”

It is plain from Petrarch’s letter that the kingdom of Naples was now under a miserable subjection to the Hungarian faction, aid that the young Queen’s situation was anything but enviable.  Few characters in modern history have been drawn in such contrasted colours as that of Giovanna, Queen of Naples.  She has been charged with every vice, and extolled for every virtue.  Petrarch represents her as a woman of weak understanding, disposed to gallantry, but incapable of greater crimes.  Her history reminds us much of that of Mary Queen of Scots.  Her youth and her character, gentle and interesting in several respects, entitle her to the benefit of our doubts as to her assent to the death of Andrew.  Many circumstances seem to me to favour those doubts, and the opinion of Petrarch is on the side of her acquittal.

On his arrival in Naples, Petrarch had an audience with the Queen Dowager; but her grief and tears for the loss of her husband made this interview brief and fruitless with regard to business.  When he spoke to her about the prisoners, for whose release the Colonnas had desired him to intercede, her Majesty referred him to the council.  She was now, in reality, only a state cypher.

The principal prisoners for whom Petrarch was commissioned to plead, were the Counts Minervino, di Lucera, and Pontenza.  Petrarch applied to the council of state in their behalf, but he was put off with perpetual excuses.  While the affair was in agitation he went to Capua, where the prisoners were confined.  “There,” he writes to the Cardinal Colonna, “I saw your friends; and, such is the instability of Fortune, that I found them in chains.  They support their situation with fortitude.  Their innocence is no plea in their behalf to those who have shared in the spoils of their fortune.  Their only expectations rest upon you.  I have no hopes, except from the intervention of some superior power, as any dependence on the clemency of the council is out of the question.  The Queen Dowager, now the most desolate of widows, compassionates their case, but cannot assist them.”

Petrarch, wearied with the delays of business, sought relief in excursions to the neighbourhood.  Of these he writes an account to Cardinal Colonna.