“Kinsfolk and nobles,” said the usurper, “by the oaths ye have sworn, determine between me and this man.”
And the empress answered: “Let me, as in duty bound, speak first. Heaven be my witness, I know not which is my lord and husband.”
And all the nobles said the same.
Thereupon the feigned Jovinian rose and spake: “Nobles and friends, hearken! that man is your emperor and your master; hear ye him; know that he did exalt himself above that which was right, and make himself equal unto God. Verily he hath been rewarded; he hath suffered much indignity and wrong, and, of God’s will, ye knew him not; he hath repented him of his grievous sin, and the scourge is now removed; he has made such satisfaction as man can make. Hear ye him, know him, obey him.”
As the feigned emperor thus addressed the astonished nobles, his features seemed illumined with a fair and spiritual light, his imperial robes fell from off him, and he stood confessed before the assembly an angel of God, clothed in white raiment. And, as he ended his speech, he bowed his head, and vanished from their sight.
Jovinian returned to his throne, and for three years reigned with so much mercy and justice, that his subjects had no cause to regret the change of their emperor. And it came to pass, after the space of three years, the same angel appeared to him in a dream, and warned him of his death. So Jovinian dictated his troublous life to his secretaries, that it might remain as a warning unto all men against worldly pride, and an incitement to the performance of our religious duties. And when he had so done, he meekly resigned himself, and fell asleep in death.
“So much for the story, as a story; now for the moral, with all that eccentric spirit of refinement and abstraction with which the age was characterized,” said Herbert.
“The moral in this case is less eccentric than in many to which I hope we shall come before Christmas is over.”
“Jovinian was but the picture of the proud, worldly-minded man, entirely given up to vanity and folly. The first knight whose castle he visited was True Wisdom, ever disdainful of the pomps and vanities of the world. The next knight was Conscience. The dog that turned against his old master, was the lusts of the flesh, our own evil desires, which will ever in the end turn against those who have pampered them. The falcon is God’s grace; the empress, man’s soul; and the clothes in which the good priest clothed the half-frozen emperor, are those kingly virtues which he had thrown off, when he gave loose rein to the vanities of the world.”
“It must be admitted,” remarked Herbert, “that from very early times a secondary meaning was commonly attached to every important work; it progressed from the sacred writings through the poetic fictions of the classics, to compositions professedly allegorical. The want of discrimination, which in our eyes assumes much of the appearance of profane levity, with which the fictions of the classics were interpreted to signify the great truths and mysteries of religion, was, perhaps, hardly reprehensible in the simple state of knowledge which prevailed at the time when these attempts at secondary interpretation were made.”