to the dwelling of Donegild, the king’s mother, and said, ’Be blithe, madam; the queen has given birth to a son, and joy is in the land.  Here is the letter I bear to the king.’  The wicked Donegild said, ’You must be already tired; here are refreshments.’  And while the simple man drank ale and wine, she forged a letter, saying that the queen had been delivered of a creature so fiendish and horrible that no one in the castle could bear to look upon it.  This letter the messenger gave to the king; and who can tell his grief!  But he wrote in reply, ’Welcome be the child that Christ sends!  Welcome, O Lord, be thy pleasure!  Be careful of my wife and child till my return.’  The messenger on his return slept at Donegild’s court, with the letter under his girdle.  It was stolen while in his drunken sleep, and another put in its place, charging the constable not to let Constance remain three days in the kingdom, but to send her and her child away in the same ship in which she had come.  The constable could not help himself.  Thousands are gathered on the shore.  With a face wild and pale as when she came from the sea, and bearing her crying infant in her arms, she comes through the crowd, which shrinks back, leaving a lane for her sorrow.  She takes her seat in the little boat; and while the cruel people gaze hour by hour from the shore, she passes into the sunset, and away out into the night under the stars.  When Alla returned from the war, and found how he had been deceived, he slew his mother, in the bitterness of his heart.

“News had come to Rome of the cruelty of the Sultan’s mother to Constance, and an army was sent to waste her country.  After the land had been burned and desolated, the commander was crossing the seas in triumph, when he met the ship sailing in which sat Constance and her little boy.  They were both brought to Rome, and although the commander’s wife and Constance were cousins, the one did not know the other.  By this time, remorse for the slaying of his mother had seized Alla’s mind, and he could find no rest.  He resolved to make a pilgrimage to Rome in search of peace.  He crossed the Alps with his train, and entered the city with great glory and magnificence.  One day he feasted at the commander’s house, at which Constance dwelt; and at her request her little son was admitted, and during the progress of the feast the child went and stood looking in the king’s face.  ’What fair child is that standing yonder?’ said the king.  ’By St. John; I know not!’ quoth the commander; ’he has a mother, but no father that I know of.’  And then he told the king—­who seemed all the while like a man stunned—­how he had found the mother and child floating about on the sea.  The king rose from the table and sent for Constance; and when he saw her, and thought on all her wrongs, he could not refrain from tears.  ‘This is your little son, Maurice,’ she said, as she led him in by the hand.  Next day she met the emperor her father in the street, and, falling down on her knees before him, said, ’Father, has the remembrance of your young child Constance gone out of your mind?  I am that Constance whom you sent to Syria, and who was thought to be lost in the sea.’  That day there was great joy in Rome; and soon afterwards Alla, with his wife and child, returned to England, where they lived in great prosperity till he died.”