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 sceptered with a cap and bauble, and be my fool."

Robert was still tongue-tied. He tried in vain to speakto 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.

"Fetch the cap and bauble," said the sovereign, "and let the King of Fools have his coronation."

Robert felt that he must submit to what he thought the power of the devil. He began even to have glimpses of a real though hesitating sense of the advantage of securing friendship on the side of Heaven. But rage and indignation were uppermost; and while the attendants were shaving his head, fixing the cap, and jeeringly dignifying him with the baublesceptre, he was racking his brain for schemes of vengeance. What exasperated him most of all, next to the shaving, was to observe, that those who had flattered him most when a king, were the loudest in their contempt, now that he was the court-zany. One pompous lord in particular, with a high and ridiculous voice, which continued to laugh when all the rest had done, and produced fresh peals by the continuance, was so excessively provoking, that Robert, who felt his vocal and muscular powers restored to him as if for the occasion, could not help shaking his fist at the grinning slave, and crying out, "Thou beast, Terranova!" which, in all but the person so addressed, only produced additional merriment. At length, the king ordered the fool to be taken away, in order to sup with the dogs. Robert was stupified; but he found himself hungry against his will, and gnawed the bones which had been chucked away by his nobles.

The proud King Robert of Sicily lived in this way for two years, always raging in his mind, always sullen in his manners, and subjected to every indignity which his quondam favourites could heap on him, without the power to resent it. For the new monarch seemed unjust to him only. He had all the humiliations, without any of the privileges, of the cap and bells, and was the dullest fool ever heard of. All the notice

the king took of him, consisted in his asking, now and then, in full court, when everything was silent, "Well, fool, art thou still a king?" Robert, for some weeks, loudly answered that he was; but, finding that the answer was but a signal for a roar of laughter, he converted his speech into the silent dignity of a haughty and royal attitude; till, observing that the laughter was greater at this dumb show, he ingeniously adopted a manner which expressed neither defiance nor acquiesence, and the Angel for some time let him alone.

Meantime, everybody but the unhappy Robert blessed the new, or, as they supposed him, the altered king: for everything in the mode of government was changed. Taxes were light; the poor had plenty; work was reasonable; the nobles themselves were expected to work after their fashion-to study, to watch zealously over the interests of their tenants, to travel, to bring home new books and innocent luxuries. Half the day throughout Sicily was given to industry, and half to healthy and intellectual enjoyment; and the inhabitants became at once the manliest and tenderest, the gayest and most studious people in the world. Wherever the king went, he was loaded with benedictions; and the fool heard them, and began to wonder what the devil the devil had to do with appearances so extraordinary. And thus, for the space of time we have mentioned, he lived wondering, and sullen, and hating, and hated, and despised.

At the expiration of these two years, or nearly so, the king announced his intention of paying a visit to his brother the Pope and his brother the Emperor, the latter agreeing to come to Rome for the purpose. He went accordingly with a great train, clad in the most magnificent garments, all but the fool, who was arrayed in fox-tails, and put side by side with an ape,

dressed like himself. The people poured out of their houses, and fields, and vineyards, all struggling to get a sight of the king's face, and to bless it; the ladies strewing flowers, and the peasants' wives holding up their rosy children, which last sight seemed particularly to delight the sovereign. The fool, bewildered, came after the court pages, by the side of his ape, exciting shouts of laughter; though some persons were a little astonished to think how a monarch so kind and considerate

to all the rest of the world, should be so hard upon a sorry fool. But it was told them, that this fool was the most perverse and insolent of men towards the prince himself; and then, although their wonder hardly ceased, it was full of indignation against the unhappy wretch, and he was loaded with every kind of scorn and abuse. The proud King Robert seemed the only blot and disgrace upon the island.

The fool had still a hope, that when his Holiness the Pope saw him, the magician's arts would be at an end; for though he had had no religion at all, properly speaking, he had retained something even of a superstitious faith in the highest worldly form of it. The good Pope, however, beheld him without the least recognition; so did the Emperor; and when he saw them both gazing with unfeigned admiration at the exalted beauty of his former altered self, and not with the old faces of pretended good-will and secret dislike, a sense of awe and humility, for the first time, fell gently upon him. Instead of getting as far as possible from his companion the ape, he approached him closer and closer, partly that he might shroud himself under the very shadow of his insignificance, partly from a feeling of absolute sympathy, and a desire to possess, if not one friend in the world, at least one associate who was not an enemy.

It happened that day, that it was the same day on which, two years ago, Robert had scorned the words in the Magnificat. Vespers were performed before the sovereigns: the music and the soft voices fell softer as they came to the words; and Robert again heard, with far different feelings, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble." Tears gushed into his eyes, and, to the astonishment of the court, the late brutal fool was seen with his hands clasped upon his bosom in prayer, and the water pouring down his face in floods of penitence. Holier feelings than usual had pervaded all hearts that day. The king's favourite chaplain had preached from the text which declares charity to be greater than faith or hope. The Emperor began to think mankind really his brothers. The Pope wished that some new council of the church would authorize him to set up, instead of the Jewish Ten Commandments, and in more glorious letters, the new, eleventh, or great Christian commandment,-" Behold I give unto you a new commandment, LovE ONE ANOTHER." In short, Rome felt that day like angel-governed Sicily.

When the service was over, the unknown King Robert's behaviour was reported to the unsuspected King-Angel, who had seen it but said nothing. The sacred interloper announced his intention of giving the fool his discharge; and he sent for him accordingly, having first dismissed every other person. King Robert came in his fool's-cap and bells, and stood humbly at a distance before the strange great charitable unknown, looking on the floor and blushing. He had the ape by the hand, who had long courted his good-will, and who, having now obtained it, clung to his human friend in a way that, to a Roman, might have seemed ridiculous, but to the angel, was affecting.