Note 10 — THE SPANIARD IN SICILY.

"It is at this time (the moment when Charles of Anjou raised the siege of Messina) that estimable, but second-rate historians place the pretended adventure of a French chevalier of the name of Clermont, to whose wife, they say, Charles of Anjou had offered violence. They add, that, after revenging himself by a similar outrage to one of the king's daughters, this French knight fled to Sicily, where he founded the powerful house of Chiaromonte, Counts of Modica." (St Priest, vol. iv. p. 104.) M. de St Priest disbelieves this anecdote, which is certainly inconsistent with the character for rigid morality and chastity he assigns to his hero.