One day when the king was sitting in his apartment, a monk entered the room, crying with a loud voice, “Hear the ambassador of God and of the Virgin Mary!” The king, upon first sight of the man, expecting some improper liberty might be taken, ordered his attendants to turn him out at the door, and, being removed from his presence, to bring word what he had to say, which was to this effect: “It is three days since I rose from the dead. One day when I was standing in paradise, God called me, and sent me with this message to you:--O emperor! says God, it is now many years that I hoped you would amend of the great sin, the having forsaken the faith of your ancestors. All this time the Virgin Mary was kneeling before her blessed Son, beseeching him to pardon you; and, upon the whole, it was agreed, that, unless you repent in a fortnight’s time, you should be punished in such a manner that you will not forget it presently.” Socinios desired them to ask the man, “How it was possible that, having so lately left the grave, his body should have so little of the emaciated appearance of one long buried, and be now in such good case, fat and fair?” To this he answered, “That, in paradise, he thanked God there was abundance of every thing; and people were very well used there, for he had lived upon good bread, and plenty of good wine, biskets, and sweetmeats.” To which Socinios answered, “Tell him, after the pains he had taken, it would be wrong in me to keep him long from so good a place as this his paradise. Let him go and acquaint the person who sent him, I shall live and die in the Roman Catholic faith; and, in order that he may deliver the message quickly in the other world, speed him instantly out of this, by hanging him upon the tree before the palace-gate.” The love of the wine, sweetmeats, and other celestial food, seemed to have forsaken the ambassador. Upon hearing this message he recanted, and was pardoned at the joint petition of those of the court that were present, who concurred with the monk in thinking, that the message of the emperor was an indecent one, and ought not to be delivered; that having been in paradise once, was as much as fell to the lot of any one man, and that he should therefore remain upon earth. The intended catastrophe, then, of this singular ambassador was remitted; but the truth of his mission was believed by the populace, and raised great scruples in every weak mind. The many misfortunes that had lately befallen the troops of the king were accounted as so much increase of power to the rebel Melca Christos, who, encouraged by the correspondence he held with the chiefs of the Alexandrian religion, began now to take upon him the state and office of a king. His first essay was to send, as governor to the province of Tigré, a son of that great rebel Za Selassé, whose manifold treasons, we have already seen, occasioned the death of two kings, Za Denghel and Jacob.