Читать книгу The Poisoned Crown - Морис Дрюон - Страница 8

Standing at one of the windows in the huge Castelnuovo, which had a view over the port and bay of Naples, the old Queen Mother, Marie of Hungary, watched a ship weighing anchor. Making sure that no one could see her, she wiped a tear from the corner of a lashless eyelid with a roughened finger.

‘Now I can die,’ she murmured ...

For her dearly loved Clémence, a princess of twenty-two without territorial inheritance, rich only in her reputation for beauty and virtue, she had recently obtained the most important of alliances, the most imposing of marriages. Clémence was leaving to become Queen of France. Thus she, who was the most deprived by fate of all the princesses of Anjou, who had waited the longest for a match, was now to receive the finest of kingdoms and to reign as suzerain over all her relations. It clearly illustrated the teaching of the Gospel.