Feigning to be unmotherly, she spurred on her husband to grasp his freedom, and urged and tempted him to insurrection; causing her son to be summoned to Sweden with a promise of vast gifts.  For she thought that she would best gain her desire if, as soon as her son had got his stepfather’s gold, she could snatch up the royal treasures and flee, robbing her husband of bed and money to hoot.  For she fancied that the best way to chastise his covetousness would be to steal away his wealth.  This deep guilefulness was hard to detect, from such recesses of cunning did it spring; because she dissembled her longing for a change of wedlock under a show of aspiration for freedom.  Blind-witted husband, fancying the mother kindled against the life of the son, never seeing that it was rather his own ruin being compassed!  Doltish lord, blind to the obstinate scheming of his wife, who, out of pretended hatred of her son, devised opportunity for change of wedlock!  Though the heart of woman should never be trusted, he believed in a woman all the more insensately, because he supposed her faithful to himself and treacherous to her son.

Accordingly, Rolf, tempted by the greatness of the gifts, chanced to enter the house of Athisl.  He was not recognised by his mother owing to his long absence and the cessation of their common life; so in jest he first asked for some victual to appease his hunger.  She advised him to ask the king for a luncheon.  Then he thrust out a torn piece of his coat, and begged of her the service of sewing it up.  Finding his mother’s ears shut to him, he observed, “That it was hard to discover a friendship that was firm and true, when a mother refused her son a meal, and a sister refused a brother the help of her needle.”  Thus he punished his mother’s error, and made her blush deep for her refusal of kindness.  Athisl, when he saw him reclining close to his mother at the banquet, taunted them both with wantonness, declaring that it was an impure intercourse of brother and sister.  Rolf repelled the charge against his honour by an appeal to the closest of natural bonds, and answered, that it was honourable for a son to embrace a beloved mother.  Also, when the feasters asked him what kind of courage he set above all others, he named Endurance.  When they also asked Athisl, what was the virtue which above all he desired most devotedly, he declared, Generosity.  Proofs were therefore demanded of bravery on the one hand and munificence on the other, and Rolf was asked to give an evidence of courage first.  He was placed to the fire, and defending with his target the side that was most hotly assailed, had only the firmness of his endurance to fortify the other, which had no defence.  How dexterous, to borrow from his shield protection to assuage the heat, and to guard his body, which was exposed to the flames, with that which sometime sheltered it amid the hurtling spears!  But the glow was hotter than the fire of spears; as though