Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/118

106 presently disappeared. (19) To follow was useless; for he was in the middle of the water. Giving himself up, therefore, to his desperate situation, he began to lament and to pluck away his hair; and would have cast himself into the stream, had not Divine Providence preserved him.

Certain shepherds, however, observing the lion carrying off the child in his teeth, pursued him with dogs; and by the peculiar dispensation of heaven it was dropped unhurt. As for the other, some ploughman witnessing the adventure, shouted lustily after the wolf, and succeeded in liberating the poor victim from its jaws. Now it happened, that both the shepherds and ploughmen resided in the same village, and brought up the children amongst them. But Eustacius knew nothing of this, and his affliction was so poignant, that he was unable to control his complaints. "Alas!" he would say, "once I flourished like a luxuriant tree, but now I am altogether blighted. Once I was encompassed with military ensigns, and bands of armed men; now, I am a single being in the universe: I