; 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 were brought up together a tender intimacy would
arise between the two child