Page:Goldenlegendlive00jaco.djvu/181

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S. Edward
167

and said: ’Sire, ye deem that I should betray your brother? I pray God that this morsel of bread may choke me if I consented to his death.' Then the king blessed the bread, and bade him eat it, and the morsel abode in his throat and choked him, so that his breath was stopped, and so died wretchedly. Then the king said: 'Draw the traitor out of my presence, for now his treason and falsehood appeareth.'

On Easter-day when he had received our Lord, and was set at his dinner, in the middle of it, when all was silence, he fell into a smiling, and after into a sadness, wherefore all that were there marvelled greatly, but none durst ask of him what he meant. But after dinner duke Harold followed him into his chamber with a bishop and an abbot that were of his privy council, and demanded of him the cause of that thing. Then the king said: 'When I remembered at my dinner the great benefits of worship and dignity of meats, of drinks, of servants, of array, and of all riches and royalty that I stood in at that time, and I referred all that worship to Almighty God, as my custom is, then our Lord opened mine eyen, and I saw the seven sleepers lying in a cave in the Mount Celion beside the city of Ephesus, in the same form and manner as though I had been by them. And I smiled when I saw them turn them from the right side to the left side, but when I understood what is signified by the said turning, I had no cause to laugh but rather to mourn. The turning signifieth that the prophecy be fulfilled that saith: Surget gens contra gentem, that is to say,