1038. 'I ought to suppose, in accordance with reasonable opinion.' Chaucer tells the story quite in his own way. There is no trace of ll. 1038-1042 in the French, and scarcely any of ll. 1048-1071, which is all in his own excellent strain. 1056. _shet_, shut, closed. Compare the description of Griselda in the Clerkes Tale, E. 1058-1061. 1058. Both _twyes_ and _owne_ are dissyllabic. 1060. _all his halwes_, all His saints. Hence the term All-hallow-mas, i. e. All Saints' day. 1061. _wisly_, certainly. _as have_, I pray that he may have; see note to l. 859 above. 'I pray He may so surely have mercy on my soul, as that I am as innocent of your suffering as Maurice my son is like you in the face.' 1078. After this line, the French text tells us that King Ælla presented himself before Pope Pelagius, who absolved him for the death of his mother. Pelagius II. was pope in 578-90. 1086. Here again, Tyrwhitt supposes Chaucer to follow Gower. But, in fact, Chaucer and Gower both consulted Trivet, who says [164] here--'Constaunce charga son fitz Morice del messager [_or_ message].... Et puis, quant Morice estoit deuaunt lempereur venuz, oue la compaignie honurable, et auoit son message fest de part le Roi son pere,' &c.; i. e. 'Constance charged her son Maurice with the message ... and then, when Maurice was come before the emperor, with the honourable company, and had done his message on behalf of the king his father,' &c. Or, as before, Gower may have copied Chaucer. 1090. _As he_; used much as we should now use 'as one.' It refers to the Emperor, of course. 1091. _Sente_, elliptical for 'as that he would send.' Tyrwhitt reads _send_; but it is best to leave an expression like this as it stands in the MSS. It was probably a colloquial idiom; and, in the next line, we have _wente_. Observe that _sente_ is in the subjunctive mood, and is equivalent to 'he would send.' 1107. Chaucer so frequently varies the length and accent of a proper name that there is no objection to the supposition that we are here to read _Cústancë_ in three syllables, with an accent on the first syllable. In exactly the same way, we find _Grísildis_ in three syllables (E. 948), though in most other passages it is _Grisíld_. We have had _Cústance_, accented on the first syllable, several times; see ll. 438, 556, 566, 576, &c.; also _Custáncë_, three syllables, ll. 184, 274, 319, 612, &c. Tyrwhitt inserts a second _your_ before _Custance_, but without authority. 1109. _It am I_; it is I. It is the usual idiom. So in the A.S. version of St. John vi. 20, we find 'ic hyt eom,' i. e. I it am, and in a Dutch New Testament, A.D. 1700, I find 'Ick ben 't,' i. e. I am it. The Moeso-Gothic version omits _it_, having simply 'Ik im'; so does Wyclif's, which has 'I am.' Tyndale, A.D. 1526, has 'it ys I.'