Robert frowned as he listened. He remembered enough of his boyhood’s Latin to interpret their message, and he muttered it sourly to himself in the vulgar tongue of Sicily.
“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
The reverential words chafed his disordered temper. He wove their fine gold into the dark web of his tempestuous passions. “Why do these monks plague me with their croakings?” he cried. “I need no help from Heaven to strengthen me against this buffet.”
Renewed rage at his denial set him devising new pangs for her who had denied him, heedless of the chanting from the church; but soon again he found himself listening, as if against his will, to the sonorous words.
“Fecit potentiam in brachio suo: dispersit superbos mente cordis sui.”
“What are the fools crooning?” cried the exasperated King. “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”
The words, as he rendered them, rang in his ears like a warning. He hardened his heart, but he listened still, for the next sentence seemed to lapse with deeper solemnity through the golden air.
“Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.”
Robert echoed the words in a scream of insane fury.
“He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree.”