“Askest thou me who I am, and wherefore I am come?” rejoined Jovinian. “Am not I thy emperor, and the lord of this house and this realm?”
“These our nobles shall decide,” replied the new king. “Tell me now, which of us twain is your emperor?”
And the nobles answered with one accord: “Thou dost trifle with us, sire. Can we doubt that thou art our emperor, whom we have known from his childhood? As for this base fellow, we know not who he is.”
And with one accord the people cried out against Jovinian that he should be punished.
On this the usurper turned to the empress of Jovinian—“Tell me,” said he, “on thy true faith, knowest thou this man who calls himself emperor of this realm?”
And the empress answered: “Good my lord, have not thirty years passed since I first knew thee, and became the mother of our children? Why askest thou me of this fellow? and yet it doth surprise me how he should know what none save you and I can know?”
Then the usurper turned to Jovinian, and with a harsh countenance rebuked his presumption, and ordered the executioners to drag him by the feet by horses until he died. This said he before all his court; but he sent his servant to the tailor, and commanded him to scourge Jovinian; and for this once to set him free.
The deposed emperor desired death. “Why,” said he to himself, “should I now live? my friends, my dependents, yea, even the partner of my bed shuns me, and I am desolate among those whom my bounties have raised. Come, I will seek the good priest, to whom I so often have laid open my most secret faults: of a surety, he will remember me.”
Now the good priest lived in a small cell, nigh to a chapel about a stone’s-cast from the palace gate; and when Jovinian knocked, the priest, being engaged in reading, answered from within: “Who is there? why troublest thou me?”
“I am the emperor Jovinian; open the window, I would speak to thee,” replied the fugitive.