bert sighed
commiseratingly.

"Poor man, he meant well," he condescended. "Measured by our standard he
must needs seem puny--as, indeed, what king of them all, Christian or
Pagan, would not?" His manner so far had been in agreement with his
supple companion, but suddenly a change came over his temper, and he
turned on Hildebrand a frown so coldly menacing that the favorite
recoiled in surprise and alarm.

"Still, he had the honor to beget me," he added. "So you will do well
not to speak lightly of him, my good Hildebrand."

The embarrassed favorite tried to recover his ground and his composure.

"Sire, you are always right," he stammered. "The tree from which so
royal a rose sprang--"

Robert, having enjoyed his friend's discomfiture, was now weary of it,
and interrupted his apologies with a raised hand.

"Enough," he said, and, turning from Hildebrand in the direction of the
group of ecclesiastics, he deigned for the first time to regard them as
if they really existed and were not mere gorgeous puppets set up there
as portion of the pageant of his pride. The archbishop of Syracuse and
his fellows had waited in their splendid vestments as patiently for any
sign of the King's favor as any light lady of the court, and this slight
show of it served to stir them into delighted animation.

Few in that synod of slaves had served the Church in the days of Robert
the Good. In his six-weeks' reign, Robert the Bad had worked wonders,
and now his armies, civil and ecclesiastic, were generalled by his
servants imported from Naples. Such soldiers, such churchmen as had
offered opposition to his imperious humors had been either banished or
imprisoned, or at the best flung from their offices without reward or
appeal, and the young Prince had both sword and crozier at his absolute
command, for it pleased Robert's fancy to proclaim himself religious as
well as military head of the state, to whom the proudest of prelates was
no more and no less a pawn than a captain of the guard.

Contempt smiled in the eyes of the King and on his lips as he saw the
new-made archbishop of Syracuse move eagerly forward in response to the
disdainful gesture which told him that the King remembered his
existence. He was followed by two priests who bore between them on a
stand of ebony a magnificent reliquary, a masterpiece of Byzantine
handicraft, its gold and jewels glowing like the fires of fairyland in
the mellow evening sunlight.

"Sire," said