e
relic of dead grandeur. He sat so motionless that the birds heeded him
no more than if he had stiffened into stone, senseless as the block
which supported him, monumental as the marble. His robes, his jewels,
glowed and glittered in the light of the descending sun; but the birds
in their wheelings heeded them no more than if they had been the
adornments of the radiant image that once had reigned in that place. The
bees boomed homeward, the shadows lengthened, all the sounds of evening
began to voice along the aisles of the forest, but the King gave them no
heed. From fierce thoughts of vengeance, from the ache of defied
desires, his mind had dropped into the past as a swimmer might drop into
the darkness of a cool pool. And as such a swimmer snared by
treacherous weeds might in his struggles see all the facts and
happenings of his past life flow before him, so to Robert's brain the
flood of memory flowed unsummoned, or, rather, he seemed to sit, with a
great painted book upon his knee, and turn at once unreluctant and
indifferent the gold-and-purple pages of his past--his fretful, curious
youth, his joyous flight over sea, his viceroyalty at Naples. And every
page of the book was a tale of pleasure sated, fleshly greeds gratified,
the pride of life, the lust of the eye. And every page was starred with
the faces of fair women, who had welcomed, wooed, worshipped; they
seemed to shift and flicker over the fancied pages like the vivid faces
of dreams, the many forgotten, the few faintly remembered--dark
Faustina, fair Messalinda, brown Yolande--whose score was yet to
pay--Lycabetta, the miracle of ivory and ebony. So the faces thronged,
thick-haunting, beseeching, teasing, pleading, and then suddenly they
vanished; on a white, stainless page one face glowed into life, the face
of a girl with clear, honest eyes, with adorable, maiden mouth, with
wind-blown tresses as red as the most royal sunset--the face of the
executioner's daughter, the face of a brave virgin, the face of
Perpetua.

Robert wrenched himself from his lethargy with an impious oath, and
glared about him. He laughed as he thought of his company, priests and
courtiers, minions and soldiers, cooped up in the church, while he,
their master, sat out there enjoying sunshine and shadow and telling the
beads of his sweetest sins. A mad thought came into his mind--would it
not be droll to girdle the church with soldiers sworn to slay whoever
dared to issue from th