This splendid brotherhood, this shining sisterhood, stood, as it were,
poised in an attitude of expectation more eager than ever was shown for
the passing of Ramazan by any of those Saracens who at one time were
lords of the lovely island. The sun that means so much to the Saracen
was sinking down the sky, but the sun for which those fair faces of men
and women watched with so much real or assumed impatience had not yet
risen upon their horizon. They were waiting for the coming of the King.
At the point where the road to the church had become impracticable for
horse or litter, courtiers and ladies, priests and knights had to climb
as best they could the stubborn slope to the summit. But the fatigue
which was thus imposed upon the tender limbs of women, upon the ancient
frames of ecclesiastics, was not to be borne by the new King of Sicily.
He was carried up the incline in a chair by two herculean Moorish
slaves, so strong and surefooted that the stubborn ascent could be made
with the least possible discomfort to his royal body. While the others
had groaned and sweated as they scuffled up the hill--that they might
reach the goal in time to receive their royal master--that royal master
made his progress with all the ease and leisure possible, accompanied by
his closest friend, his dearest favorite, the Count Hildebrand.

A little stir in the courtly circle intimated that the awaited moment
had arrived. Men bent the knee in homage, women bowed in reverence, as
the young King, lightly resting his hand on Hildebrand's shoulder,
leaped from his chair and advanced in smiles upon his worshippers.

It is the privilege of an older world to learn with something like
intimate accuracy the appearance of the King, for though the few
pictures that exist of him in certain illuminated manuscripts in the
libraries of Sicilian monasteries are, in the first place, but
indifferent specimens of the indifferent portraiture of the period, and,
in the second place, are almost all taken at a later period of his life,
the records, both monastic and civil, of the age furnish descriptions,
evidently faithful and always in agreement, which allow of some attempt
to appreciate his form and features.

[Illustration: KING ROBERT OF SICILY]

The young Prince, whom the fool Diogenes had nicknamed Robert the Bad,
was still in the flower of his age, the pride of his health, the triumph
of his beauty. Of middle height, his slender form made him always
se