Note (return) — Chapter XIX · 159
Reading edition
Two years after this Queen Erka fell sick of a grievous disease and lay at the point of death. Sending for Theodoric, she rehearsed to him how he had ever been the best friend of her husband and herself; and as it might well happen that this sickness would sever that long friendship, she desired to give him fifteen marks of red gold in a beaker and a costly purple robe, as memorials of the same, and she prayed him to take her young kinswoman, Herauda, 172 to wife. Theodoric said: "Good lady and queen! thy sickness is doubtless a dangerous one. True friendship hast thou ever shown to me and mine; and better it were for Attila to lose the half of his kingdom than to lose thee". Thereat he wept like a child and could say no more words, but went quickly forth of the chamber.