overturned them." For He sent among them, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, the spirit of giddiness; and He set the idolaters against the idolaters, like the Egyptians against the Egyptians; each man rushed on his fellow, and brother fought against brother, and the chariots and their riders were cast to the ground and overturned; and forty and nine men were slain, and hardly did the rest escape. But the king trembled at the rebuke of the Lord, and at the breath of the spirit of His anger, and ran into a hiding-place with only four of his people, that he might conceal himself from the terrors of the face of the Lord. But the queen, entreating for the pardon of the king, reverently approached, and, bending her knee before Saint Patrick, promised that her consort should come unto him and should adore his God. And the king, according to her promise, yet with a designing heart, bended his knees before the saint, and simulated to adore the Christ in which he believed not. There, with the tongue of iniquity and the heart of falsehood, he promised that if on the morrow he would vouchsafe to visit his palace, he would obey all his precepts. But the man of God, though the Lord suffered not the wickedness which this unworthy king had conceived in his heart, confidently trusting in the protection of the Lord, assented to his entreaty.
CHAPTER XLIV.
How the Saint Escaped the Deadly Snares.
And the king, bidding farewell to the bishop, returned to his palace, and in the several places through which the saint was to pass he laid an ambush; and divers rivers
