NORMAN TIMES--LEGEND OF KING ROBERT.
HOW KING ROBERT OF SICILY WAS DISPOSSESSED OF HIS THRONE; AND WHO SAT
UPON IT.--HIS WRATH, SUFFERINGS, AND REPENTANCE.
[Illustration]
In the glance at the ancient history of Sicily in our third chapter, we
have seen that the Greek and Roman sway was succeeded by that of the
Saracens. They were masters of the island for the space of two hundred
years, but have left no memorials, with the exception of a building or
two, and traces of Arabic in the Sicilian tongue. The island was then
conquered by a handful of Norman gentlemen, who had obtained possession of
Naples, and whose history would be romantic enough to be worth repeating,
if it were anything but a succession of wars. Their wonderful ascendency,
and no less extraordinary personal prowess, are supposed by some, not
without reason, to have given rise to much of the gigantic fable of the
Orlandos and other peers of Charlemagne, who were all Frenchmen.
As an old ruin, therefore, standing in some spot surrounded by
architecture of different orders, will sometimes be found to be the sole
representative of a former age, we shall make the good old legend of King
Robert, in this our Sicilian and Pastoral Sketch-book, stand for the whole
Norman portion of its chronology. It is not military, except in the
_brusque_ self-sufficiency with which the character of King Robert sets
out; but it is emphatically what we understand by Gothic; which, in modern
parlance, implies the character of the interval between ancient and modern
times. The Greek Sicilian poets, could they have foreseen it, would have
loved it; and their successors, the pastoral writers of modern times, of
whom we have afterwards to speak, unquestionably did so, whenever they met
with it among their old reading. Shakspeare would have made a divine play
of it, for it is very dramatic. Fancy what he would have done with the
angel, and the court fool, and the pathos! Oh, that we had had but time to
try even to dramatize it ourselves.
Who King Robert of Sicily may have been, in common earthly
history--whether intended to shadow forth one of the aforesaid Norman
chieftains who obtained possession of that island, or one of the various
dukes who contend for the honour of being called Robert the Devil, or
whether he was Robert of Anjou, hight Robert the Wise, the friend of
Petrarch and Boccaccio, and father of the calumniated Joanna--we must
leave to antiquaries to determine. Suffice to say, that in history
angelical, and in the depths of one of the very finest kinds of truth, he
was King Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urban, and of the Emperor
_Valemond_. A like story has been told of the Emperor _Jovinian_ (whoever
that prince may have been); and we shall not dispute that something of the
kind may have occurred to him also; since very strange things happen to
the most haughty of princes, if we did but know their whole lives; not
excepting their being taken for fools by their people. We shall avail
ourselves of any light which the histories of the king and the emperor may
serve to throw on each other.
Writers, then, inform us, that King Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope
Urban and of the Emperor Valemond, was a prince of great courage and
renown, but of a temper so proud and impatient, that he did not choose to
bend his knee to Heaven itself, but would sit twirling his beard, and
looking with something worse than indifference round about him, during the
gravest services of the church.
One day, while he was present at vespers on the eve of St. John, his
attention was excited to some words in the Magnificat, in consequence of a
sudden dropping of the choristers’ voices. The words were these.
“_Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles._” (“He hath put down
the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.”) Being far too
great and warlike a prince to know anything about Latin, he asked a
chaplain near him the meaning of these words; and being told what it was,
observed, that such expressions were no better than an old song, since men
like himself were not so easily put down, much less supplanted by poor
creatures whom people call “humble.”
The chaplain, doubtless out of pure astonishment and horror, made no
reply; and his majesty, partly from the heat of the weather, and partly to
relieve himself from the rest of the service, fell asleep.
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.”
Still the king said nothing.
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?”
“Stand aside, fellow!” roared the king, pushing back the door with the
same gigantic foot.
“Go to the devil!” said the porter, who was a stout fellow too, and pushed
the king back before he expected resistance. The king, however, was too
much for him. He felled him to the ground; and half strode, half rushed
into the palace, followed by the exasperated janitor.
“Seize him!” cried the porter.
“On your lives!” cried the king. “Look at me, fellow:--who am I?”
“A mad beast and fool; that’s what you are,” cried the porter; “and you’re
a dead man for coming drunk into the palace, and hitting the king’s
servants. Hold him fast.”
In came the guards, with an officer at their head, who was going to visit
his mistress, and had been dressing his curls at a looking-glass. He had
the looking-glass in his hand.
“Captain Francavilla,” said the king, “is the world run mad? or what is
it? Do your rebels pretend not even to know me? Go before me, sir, to my
rooms.” And as he spoke, the king shook off his assailants, as a lion does
curs, and moved onwards.
Captain Francavilla put his finger gently before the king to stop him; and
then looking with a sort of staring indifference in his face, said in a
very mincing tone, “Some madman.”
King Robert tore the looking-glass from the captain’s hand, and looked
himself in the face. _It was not his own face._ It was another man’s face,
very hot and vulgar; and had something in it at once melancholy and
ridiculous.
“By the living God!” exclaimed Robert, “here is witchcraft! I am changed.”
And, for the first time in his life, a sensation of fear came upon him,
but nothing so great as the rage and fury that remained. All the world
believed in witchcraft, as well as King Robert; but they had still more
certain proofs of the existence of drunkenness and madness. The royal
household had seen the king come forth from church as usual; and they were
ready to split their sides for laughter at the figment of this raving
impostor, pretending to be his majesty _changed_!
“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.
“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
bauble-sceptre, 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 stupefied; 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 acquiescence, 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
authorise 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.
“Art thou still a king?” said the Angel, putting the old question, but
without the word “fool.”
“I am a fool,” said King Robert, “and no king.”
“What wouldst thou, Robert?” returned the Angel, in a mild voice.
King Robert trembled from head to foot, and said, “Even what thou wouldst,
O mighty and good stranger, whom I know not how to name,--hardly to look
at!”
The stranger laid his hand on the shoulder of King Robert, who felt an
inexpressible calm suddenly diffuse itself over his being. He knelt down,
and clasped his hands to thank him.
“Not to me,” interrupted the Angel, in a grave, but sweet voice; and
kneeling down by the side of Robert, he said, as if in church, “Let us
pray.”
King Robert prayed, and the Angel prayed, and after a few moments, the
king looked up, and the Angel was gone; and then the king knew that it was
an Angel indeed.
And his own likeness returned to King Robert, but never an atom of his
pride; and after a blessed reign, he died, disclosing this history to his
weeping nobles, and requesting that it might be recorded in the Sicilian
Annals.
[Illustration: King Robert]