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.
Immediately the narrow window of the cell was opened, and the priest, looking out, saw no one save the poor half-clothed Jovinian. “Depart from me, thou accursed thing!” cried the priest; “thou art not our good lord the emperor, but the foul fiend himself, the great tempter.”
“Alas, alas!” cried Jovinian, “to what fate am I reserved, that even my own good priest despises me! Ah me, I bethink me—in the arrogance of my heart, I called myself a god: the weight of my sin is grievous unto me. Father, good father, hear the sins of a miserable penitent.”
Gladly did the priest listen to Jovinian; and when he had told him all his sins, the good priest comforted the penitent, and assured him of God’s mercy, if his repentance was sincere. And so it happened that on this a cloud seemed to fall from before the eyes of the priest; and when he again looked on Jovinian he knew him to be the emperor, and he pitied him, clothing him with such poor garments as he had, and went with him to the palace gate.
The porter stood in the gateway, and as Jovinian and the priest drew near he made a lowly obeisance, and opened the gate for the emperor. “Dost thou know me?” asked the emperor.
“Very well, my lord,” replied the servant; “but I wish that you had not left the palace.”
So Jovinian passed on to the hall of his palace; and as he went, all the nobles rose and bowed to the emperor; for the usurper was in another apartment, and the nobles knew again the face of Jovinian.
But a certain knight passed into the presence of the false emperor. “My lord,” said he, “there is one in the great hall to whom all men bow, for he so much resembleth you that we know not which is the emperor.”