Behind the King came the Count Hildebrand, who might have passed for the handsomest man in Sicily if Sicily had no King Robert. Dressed almost as richly as the monarch, he would have dazzled many if Robert himself had not been by. He was of a more powerful make than the King, though he affected with success the same almost feminine daintiness of carriage and habit; but the beauty of his face was of a coarser pattern than the King’s, and his dark eyes had no gleam of the almost infantile candor which was the charm of the King’s regard.
Robert greeted his adorers with a salutation that was in itself an act of grace, and made an amiable gesture with his hand which immediately summoned to him those of the court ladies who for the moment were warmed by his more immediate favor.
They fluttered about him in an instant, tremulous as brilliant butterflies hovering around a royal rose: Faustina, with the proud face of a Roman marble; Messalinda, with the fair hair of some witch-woman of the North; Yolande, the exquisite French girl with the brown hair and the brown eyes—Yolande so envied of all the others, as being, as it seemed, the latest in the King’s favor, the nearest in the King’s grace. Robert caught Faustina and Messalinda round the waist and drew them for a moment tenderly to him, serenely indifferent to the presence of spectators, many of whom were ministers of the Church, while he shot a mocking smile at Yolande, who modestly lowered her lids. Then he released his laughing, delighted captives, and snatched a fan from Yolande’s fingers, with which he fanned himself languishingly.
“Surely this hill is as high as heaven,” he complained. “Of a truth, we should wear the wings of angels for these adventures into cloud-land.”
Messalinda gave him an extravagant bow and a yet more extravagant simper.
“Your Majesty has all the other attributes of angelhood,” she averred.
Faustina hastened to offer her own tribute of flattery to the pleased Prince.
“Would you leave nothing to the celestials, sire?”
The bright face of the King smiled infinite approval of her speech.
“In truth,” he said, “if they were like me at all points they might become too vain for the courts of heaven.”