“Say not so, my lord,” interrupted Dona Sancha; “you are the greatest, wisest, and most just king who has ever sat upon the throne of Naples.”

“But the throne is usurped,” replied Robert in a voice of gloom; “you know that the kingdom belonged to my elder brother, Charles Martel; and since Charles was on the throne of Hungary, which he inherited from his mother, the kingdom of Naples devolved by right upon his eldest son, Carobert, and not on me, who am the third in rank of the family.  And I have suffered myself to be crowned in my nephew’s stead, though he was the only lawful-king; I have put the younger branch in the place of the elder, and for thirty-three years I have stifled the reproaches of my conscience.  True, I have won battles, made laws, founded churches; but a single word serves to give the lie to all the pompous titles showered upon me by the people’s admiration, and this one word rings out clearer in my ears than all the flattery of courtiers, all the songs of poets, all the orations of the crowd:—­I am an usurper!”

“Be not unjust towards yourself, my lord, and bear in mind that if you did not abdicate in favour of the rightful heir, it was because you wished to save the people from the worst misfortunes.  Moreover,” continued the queen, with that air of profound conviction that an unanswerable argument inspires, “you have remained king by the consent and authority of our Holy Father the sovereign pontiff, who disposes of the throne as a fief belonging to the Church.”

“I have long quieted my scruples thus,” replied the dying man, “and the pope’s authority has kept me silent; but whatever security one may pretend to feel in one’s lifetime, there yet comes a dreadful solemn hour when all illusions needs must vanish:  this hour for me has come, and now I must appear before God, the one unfailing judge.”

“If His justice cannot fail, is not His mercy infinite?” pursued the queen, with the glow of sacred inspiration.  “Even if there were good reason for the fear that has shaken your soul, what fault could not be effaced by a repentance so noble?  Have you not repaired the wrong you may have done your nephew Carobert, by bringing his younger son Andre to your kingdom and marrying him to Joan, your poor Charles’s elder daughter?  Will not they inherit your crown?”

“Alas!” cried Robert, with a deep sigh, “God is punishing me perhaps for thinking too late of this just reparation.  O my good and noble Sandra, you touch a chord which vibrates sadly in my heart, and you anticipate the unhappy confidence I was about to make.  I feel a gloomy presentiment—­and in the hour of death presentiment is prophecy—­that the two sons of my nephew, Louis, who has been King of Hungary since his father died, and Andre, whom I desired to make King of Naples, will prove the scourge of my family.  Ever since Andre set foot in our castle, a strange fatality has pursued and overturned my projects.  I had hoped that if Andre and Joan