that plunge, either to conceal her husband’s murder, or accuse her son, who had ever been more dear than a son unto her. Then with many interruptions and exclamations she told him, that her son Plangus, soliciting her in the old affection between them, had besought her to put to her helping hand to the death of the king, assuring her that, though all the laws in the world were against it, he would marry her when he were king. “She had not fully said thus much, with many pitiful digressions, when in comes the same fellow that brought Plangus: and running himself out of breath, fell at the king’s feet, beseeching him to save himself, for that there was a man with a sword drawn in the next room. The king affrighted, went out, and called his guard, who entering the place, found indeed Plangus with his sword in his hand, but not naked, yet standing suspiciously enough to one already suspicious. The king, thinking he had put up his sword because of the noise, never took leisure to hear his answer, but made him prisoner, meaning the next morning to put him to death in the market-place. “But the day had no sooner opened the eyes and ears of his friends and followers, but that there was a little army of them who came, and by force delivered him; although numbers on the other side, abused with the fine framing of their report, took arms for the king. But Plangus, though he might have used the force of his friends to revenge his wrong, and get the crown, yet the natural love of his father, and hate to make their suspicion seem just, caused him rather to choose a voluntary exile than to make his father’s death the purchase of his life: and therefore went he to Tiridates, whose mother was his father’s sister, living in his court eleven or twelve years, ever hoping by his intercession, and his {206} own desert, to recover his father’s grace. At the end of which time, the war of Erona happened, which my sister, with the cause thereof, discoursed unto you. “But his father had so deeply engraven the suspicion in his heart that he thought his flight rather to proceed of a fearful guiltiness than of an humble faithfulness, and therefore continued his hate with such vehemency that he did even hate his nephew Tiridates, and afterwards his niece Artaxia, because in his court he received countenance, leaving no means unattempted of destroying his son; among other, employing that wicked servant of his, who undertook to empoison him. But his cunning disguised him not so well but that the watchful servants of Plangus did discover him, whereupon the wretch was taken, and, before his well-deserved execution, by tortures forced to confess the particularities of this, which in general I have told you.