Page:Tales from Chaucer.djvu/195

After she had resided for some time in this manner, gladding the hearts of all around by her gentleness and good works, King Alla, her husband, came to Rome, for the purpose of doing penance, and to obtain pardon for the unholy deed of having slain his mother. The fame of his pilgrimage having been noised about the city, our senator, with his heralds and attendants, went forth to receive him, according to his quality. Each received the other with so much courtesy and good will, that the King invited the senator to a feast, who took the little Maurice with him, to behold the company and grandeur of the entertainment; and, by the instruction of his mother, during the intervals of the feasting, the child stood looking in the King's face. Alla fixed his eyes with wonder upon the boy, and said to the senator, 'Whose child is that standing yonder?' 'I know no more of him,' was the nobleman's answer, 'than that he has a mother, but, so far as I can hear, no father;' and with that he briefly rehearsed to the King how he found the child. 'But, Heaven knows,' added the senator, 'that in all my life I never met or heard of