“Who is the happiest she in all the world?” she asked. “Whom does the King’s pleasure consecrate to-night?”
Robert smiled enigmatically, teasing her with his eyes, teasing her with his fan. All the women leaned forward their heads, hoping for an answer. Robert let his gaze travel over their eager faces and laughed aloud, mockingly.
“Sweet creatures of prey, I will not tell you this secret, for if you knew you would make an end of her between you, and very surely I would have her live to see another sunrise. To-morrow, who knows, I may care no more, and then you may make common cause against her.”
He yawned slightly behind the fan, and then made a little gesture of dismissal, which sent the three women scurrying back from his immediate presence to the places they had quitted in the courtly ranks. His eyes, quietly indifferent, travelled over the body of Church dignitaries, waiting patiently till he should be pleased to tire of women’s talk and turn to them; his gaze rested with no show of interest upon the gray church and the great effigy of the archangel. He beckoned Hildebrand to his side.
“Is this the goal of our generosity?” he asked, pointing disdainfully with the fan to the sacred house. Hildebrand answered with deferential familiarity.
“This is the church of St. Michael, sire. Your amiable father set it here in the tenth year of your life.”
“Yes, yes, I have heard the story,” Robert said, again checking a desire to yawn. “My excellent parent, fretting over some childish sickness that presumed upon our person, vowed to build this shrine to his patron saint if I recovered. As if such men as I ever died in childhood!”
Hildebrand agreed, obsequiously. “May the King live forever,” he murmured. Robert surveyed the church again with cold disfavor.
“Whoever wrought that image, wrought it well,” he said. “It is pity to think of so much skill and so much good metal going to the composition of a mere saint that might have moulded me a Venus.”