Hildebrand raised his hands in pitying protestation against the folly of the late King.
“Your royal father was something weak of wit,” he sneered. Robert 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.