terror
at that shining, celestial shape, now saw the beautiful lips part, now
heard a voice address him; and the sound of that voice was clear like
light, and loud as all the winds of all the world--a terrible, beautiful
voice, the trumpet of doom.

"Robert of Sicily!"

The great voice called him by his name, and the King in his abasement
thrust out his hands appealingly.

"Heaven has been patient with your pride. But now the cup of your
offence is overfull, your silver has become dross, and Heaven is weary
of you. You shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth and as a garden that
hath no water. I will set you up as a gazing-stock, and it shall come to
pass that all they that look upon you shall loathe you. Base of soul, be
base of body. God will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and
will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible."

As the great words died into silence, Robert's body was wrung with
pangs. His spirit seemed to struggle in its earthly house, his flesh to
divide and dissolve in anguish. Horrid tremors tore him; rigor of cold
clawed at his heart, yet fever seemed to flush every channel of his
body; his senses reeled as if to dissolution. Again the lightning flamed
from the sword of the archangel; again the sullen thunder rumbled
through the vaulted darkness. Robert staggered to his feet with an
inarticulate cry as the archangel vanished from his view. All was
unutterable night, and then in a moment the veil of darkness dissipated;
again the mountain summit was flooded with golden air; again the kindly
sunlight reigned over earth and sea; again the birds called joyously
through the trees, and belated bees forsook the flowers; again Robert,
dizzy and dismayed, sat on the fallen column and stared at the gray
church.

But not Robert the King, the young, the comely, the radiantly clad. His
fair features had withered to the foul features of the fool Diogenes;
his body had warped to the crooks and hunches of the fool's body; his
raiment had faded from its regal pomp to the stained livery of the
mountebank. But it was with no knowledge of his metamorphosis that the
changed man stared at the church and shuddered in the warm air.

"What a horrible dream!" he muttered to himself, drawing his hand across
his damp forehead. "I must have dozed in the warm air; yet I did not
think I slept. The storm seemed so real, and the spirit with the flaming
sword--"

At the thought of the spirit he scrambled to his feet an