Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/259

try, entered with a troop of his attendants. The king played with them at tennis^[1]; and Apollonius running forward, caught up the ball, and striking it with inconceivable skill and rapidity, returned it to the royal player. The king, motioning to his servants, said, "Give up your sport; Give up your sport; for I suspect this youth is as good a player as I am." (58) Apollonius, flattered by this praise, approached the king, and catching up an unguent,^[2] with a dexterous hand anointed the king's body. Then, having gratefully administered a bath, he departed. After he was gone, "I swear to you," said his majesty to his surrounding friends, "that I never bathed so agreeably as I have done to-day by the kindness of a youth whom I do not know. Go," added he, to one of the attendants, "Go, and enquire who he is." He followed accordingly, and beheld him equipped in the mean cloak received from the fisherman. Re-

1. "Ludum Spheræ."
2. "Cyramaco accepto," in the text of the "Gesta Romanorum;" but in the "Narratio," &c. "accepto ceromata" a compound of oil and wax.