Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/546

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NOTES.

a perfect indifference for all worldly dignities.' The attendants were now ordered to retire: and the angel, being left alone with Robert, informed him that his sins were forgiven; gave him a few salutary admonitions and added,

'I am an angel of renown
'Sent to keep thy regioun.
'More joy me shall fall
'In heaven, among mine feren all,
'In an hour of a day,
'Than here I thee say,
'In an hundred thousand year;
'Though all the world, far and near,
'Were mine at my liking:
'I am an angel; thou art king!'

"With these words he disappeared; and Robert, returning to the hall, received, not without some surprise and confusion, the usual salutations of the courtiers.

"From this period he continued, during three years, to reign with so much justice and wisdom that his subjects had no cause to regret the change of their sovereign; after which, being warned by the angel of his approaching dissolution, he dictated to his secretaries a full account of his former perverseness, and of its strange punishment; and,