et,
"The Lord shot forth His arrows, and He scattered them; He poured forth
His lightnings, and He overturned them." For He sent among them,
according to the prophecy of Isaiah, the spirit of giddiness; and He
set the idolaters against the idolaters, like the Egyptians against the
Egyptians; each man rushed on his fellow, and brother fought against
brother, and the chariots and their riders were cast to the ground and
overturned; and forty and nine men were slain, and hardly did the rest
escape. But the king trembled at the rebuke of the Lord, and at the
breath of the spirit of His anger, and ran into a hiding-place with
only four of his people, that he might conceal himself from the terrors
of the face of the Lord. But the queen, entreating for the pardon of
the king, reverently approached, and, bending her knee before Saint
Patrick, promised that her consort should come unto him and should
adore his God. And the king, according to her promise, yet with a
designing heart, bended his knees before the saint, and simulated to
adore the Christ in which he believed not. There, with the tongue of
iniquity and the heart of falsehood, he promised that if on the morrow
he would vouchsafe to visit his palace, he would obey all his precepts.
But the man of God, though the Lord suffered not the wickedness which
this unworthy king had conceived in his heart, confidently trusting in
the protection of the Lord, assented to his entreaty.

CHAPTER XLIV.

_How the Saint Escaped the Deadly Snares._

And the king, bidding farewell to the bishop, returned to his palace,
and in the several places through which the saint was to pass he laid
an ambush; and divers rivers crossed the road, which might in many
parts be forded, nigh unto the shallows whereof he placed nine chariots
with some of his murderous servants, that if the saint should escape
the one he might meet with the other, and so that in no wise could he
pass unharmed. But on the morrow Patrick, with eight persons only and
the boy Benignus, going in a straight road to Teomaria, where the king
then resided, passed through them who had laid snares for his life; and
their eyes were bound, that they could not behold him; but to their
sight appeared eight stags with one hind passing over the mountains;
and thus, the Lord being his protector, did the saint and his
companions escape the contrivers of his destruction. Therefore he came
unto the royal city, and found the king