“Bring him in—bring him in!” now exclaimed other voices, the news having got to the royal apartments; “the king wants to see him.”
King Robert was brought in; and there, amidst roars of laughter (for courts were not quite such well-bred places then as they are now), he found himself face to face with another King Robert, seated on his throne, and as like his former self as he himself was unlike, but with more dignity.
“Hideous impostor!” exclaimed Robert, rushing forward to tear him down.
The court, at the word “hideous,” roared with greater laughter than before; for the king, in spite of his pride, was at all times a handsome man; and there was a strong feeling at present, that he had never in his life looked so well.
Robert, when half way to the throne, felt as if a palsy had smitten him. He stopped, and essayed to vent his rage, but could not speak.
The figure on the throne looked him steadily in the face. Robert thought it was a wizard, but hated far more than he feared it; for he was of great courage.
It was an Angel.
But the Angel was not going to disclose himself yet, nor for a long time. Meanwhile, he behaved, on the occasion, very much like a man; we mean, like a man of ordinary feelings and resentments, though still mixed with a dignity beyond what had been before observed in the Sicilian monarch. Some of the courtiers attributed it to a sort of royal instinct of contrast, excited by the claims of the impostor; but others (by the Angel’s contrivance) had seen him, as he came out of the church, halt suddenly, with an abashed and altered visage, before the shrine of St. Thomas, as if supernaturally struck with some visitation from Heaven for his pride and unbelief. The rumour flew about on the instant, and was confirmed by an order given from the throne, the moment the Angel seated himself upon it, for a gift of hitherto unheard-of amount to the shrine itself.
“Since thou art royal-mad,” said the new sovereign, “and in truth a very king of idiots, thou shalt be crowned and sceptred with a cap and bauble, and be my fool.”
Robert was still tongue-tied. He tried in vain to speak—to roar out his disgust and defiance; and half mad, indeed, with the inability, pointed with his quivering finger to the inside of his mouth, as if in apology to the beholders for not doing it. Fresh shouts of laughter made his brain seem to reel within him.