After some lapse of time, the royal “sitter in the seat of the scornful,” owing, as he thought, to the sound of the organ, but in reality to a great droning fly in his ear, woke up in more than his usual state of impatience; and he was preparing to vent it, when, to his astonishment, he perceived the church empty. Every soul was gone, excepting a deaf old woman who was turning up the cushions. He addressed her to no purpose; he spoke louder and louder, and was proceeding, as well as rage and amaze would let him, to try if he could walk out of the church without a dozen lords before him, when, suddenly catching a sight of his face, the old woman uttered a cry of “Thieves!” and shuffling away, closed the door behind her.
King Robert looked at the door in silence, then round about him at the empty church, then at himself. His cloak of ermine was gone. The coronet was taken from his cap. The very jewels from his fingers. “Thieves, verily!” thought the king, turning white from shame and rage. “Here is conspiracy—rebellion! This is that sanctified traitor, the duke. Horses shall tear them all to pieces. What, ho, there! Open the door for the king!”
“For the constable, you mean,” said a voice through the key-hole. “You’re a pretty fellow!”
The king said nothing.
“Thinking to escape, in the king’s name,” said the voice, “after hiding to plunder his closet. We’ve got you.”
The sexton could not refrain from another jibe at his prisoner:
“I see you there,” said he, “by the big lamp, grinning like a rat in a trap. How do you like your bacon?”
Now, whether King Robert was of the blood of that Norman chief who felled his enemy’s horse with a blow of his fist, we know not; but certain it is, that the only answer he made the sexton was by dashing his enormous foot against the door, and bursting it open in his teeth. The sexton, who felt as if a house had given him a blow in the face, fainted away; and the king, as far as his sense of dignity allowed him, hurried to his palace, which was close by.
“Well,” said the porter, “what do you want?”