Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Hooper.djvu/44

xxxvi And with that he laid the law to them, and said that this will ought to stand.

Now my dear friends, briefly I shall satisfie all your requests, and when he had thus said, he turned him unto the eldest brother, saying, My dear friend, if you list to abide the judgment of right, it behoreth you to be letten blood of the right arm. My lord (quoth he), your will shall be done. Then the king called for a discreet physician, commanding him to let him blood.

When the eldest son was letten blood, the king said unto them all three: My dear friends, where is your father buried? then answered they and said: forsooth my lord in such a place. Anon the king commanded to dig in the ground for the body, and to take a bone out of his breast, and to bury the body again: and so it was done. And when the bone was taken out, the king commanded that it should be laid in the blood of the elder brother, and it should lie till it had received kindly the blood, and then to be laid in the sun and dried, and after that it should be washt with clear water: his servants fulfilled all that he had commanded: and when they began to wash, the blood vanished clean away; when the king saw this, he said to the second son, It behoveth that thou be letten blood, as thy brother was. Then said he, My lord's will shall be fulfilled, and anon he was done unto like as his brother was in all things, and when they began to wash the bone, the blood vanished away. Then said the king to the third son, It behoveth thee to be letten blood likewise. He answered and said. My lord it pleaseth me well so to be. When the youngest brother was letten blood, and done unto in all things as the two brethren were before, then the king's servants began to wash the bone, but neither for washing nor rubbing might they do away the blood of the bone, but it ever appeared bloody: when the king saw this, he said it appeareth openly now that this blood is of the nature of the bone, thou art his true son, and the other two are bastards, I judge thee the tree for evermore.

In Rome there dwelt sometimes a noble emperor, named Dioclesian, who loved exceedingly the vertue of charity, wherefore he desired greatly to know what fowl loved her young best, to the intent that he might thereby grow to more perfect charity; it fortuned upon a day, that the emperor rode to a forrest to take his disport, whereas he found the nest of a great bird, (called in Latin struchio calemi, in English an ostridge) with her young, the which young bird the emperor took with him, and closed her in a vessel of glass, the dam of this little bird followed unto the emperor's palace, and flew into the hall where her young one was. But when she saw her young one, and could not come to her, nor get her out, she returned again to the forrest, and abode there three days, and at the last she came again to the palace, bearing in her mouth a worm called thumare, and when she came where her young one was, she let the worm fall upon the glass, by virtue of which worm the glass brake, and the young one flew forth with her dam. When the emperor saw this, he praised much the dam of the bird, which laboured so diligently to deliver her young one.

"The emperor Gauterus," &c.—This is Tale CL of the original Gesta; and, as the reader will see, not related with much variety.