bowed down with grief. But although the king's death was regarded as a
misfortune that nothing could avert, yet the whole town, on learning for
certain of the approach of his last hour, was affected with a sincere
grief, easily understood when one learns that the man about to die,
after a reign of thirty-three years, eight months, and a few days, was
Robert of Anjou, the most wise, just, and glorious king who had ever
sat on the throne of Sicily. And so he carried with him to the tomb the
eulogies and regrets of all his subjects.

Soldiers would speak with enthusiasm of the long wars he had waged with
Frederic and Peter of Aragon, against Henry VII and Louis of Bavaria;
and felt their hearts beat high, remembering the glories of campaigns
in Lombardy and Tuscany; priests would gratefully extol his constant
defence of the papacy against Ghibelline attacks, and the founding of
convents, hospitals, and churches throughout his kingdom; in the world
of letters he was regarded as the most learned king in Christendom;
Petrarch, indeed, would receive the poet's crown from no other hand, and
had spent three consecutive days answering all the questions that Robert
had deigned to ask him on every topic of human knowledge. The men of
law, astonished by the wisdom of those laws which now enriched the
Neapolitan code, had dubbed him the Solomon of their day; the nobles
applauded him for protecting their ancient privileges, and the people
were eloquent of his clemency, piety, and mildness. In a word, priests
and soldiers, philosophers and poets, nobles and peasants, trembled
when they thought that the government was to fall into the hands of a
foreigner and of a young girl, recalling those words of Robert, who, as
he followed in the funeral train of Charles, his only son, turned as
he reached the threshold of the church and sobbingly exclaimed to his
barons about him, "This day the crown has fallen from my head: alas for
me! alas for you!"