“My lord and my master,” said the queen in the most gentle accents of submission, “I am ready to listen to your orders; and should it be that God, in the hidden designs of His providence, has willed to call you to His glory while we are plunged in grief, your last wishes shall be fulfilled here on earth most scrupulously and exactly.  But,” she added, with all the solicitude of a timid soul, “pray suffer me to sprinkle drops of holy water and banish the accursed one from this chamber, and let me offer up some part of that service of prayer that you composed in honour of your sainted brother to implore God’s protection in this hour when we can ill afford to lose it.”

Then opening a richly bound book, she read with fervent devotion certain verses of the office that Robert had written in a very pure Latin for his brother Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, which was in use in the Church as late as the time of the Council of Trent.

Soothed by the charm of the prayers he had himself composed, the king was near forgetting the object of the interview he had so solemnly and eagerly demanded and letting himself lapse into a state of vague melancholy, he murmured in a subdued voice, “Yes, yes, you are right; pray for me, for you too are a saint, and I am but a poor sinful man.”

“Say not so, my lord,” interrupted Dona Sancha; “you are the greatest, wisest, and most just king who has ever sat upon the throne of Naples.”

“But the throne is usurped,” replied Robert in a voice of gloom; “you know that the kingdom belonged to my elder brother, Charles Martel; and since Charles was on the throne of Hungary, which he inherited from his mother, the kingdom of Naples devolved by right upon his eldest son, Carobert, and not on me, who am the third in rank of the family.  And I have suffered myself to be crowned in my nephew’s stead, though he was the only lawful-king; I have put the younger branch in the place of the elder, and for thirty-three years I have stifled the reproaches of my conscience.  True, I have won battles, made laws, founded churches; but a single word serves to give the lie to all the pompous titles showered upon me by the people’s admiration, and this one word rings out clearer in my ears than all the flattery of courtiers, all the songs of poets, all the orations of the crowd:—­I am an usurper!”

“Be not unjust towards yourself, my lord, and bear in mind that if you did not abdicate in favour of the rightful heir, it was because you wished to save the people from the worst misfortunes.  Moreover,” continued the queen, with that air of profound conviction that an unanswerable argument inspires, “you have remained king by the consent and authority of our Holy Father the sovereign pontiff, who disposes of the throne as a fief belonging to the Church.”

“I have long quieted my scruples thus,” replied the dying man, “and the pope’s authority has kept me silent; but whatever security one may pretend to feel in one’s lifetime, there yet comes a dreadful solemn hour when all illusions needs must vanish:  this hour for me has come, and now I must appear before God, the one unfailing judge.”