I tell you that if Olaf had tasted one of them by now he would have been dead or dying." Constantine drank another cup of wine, which, oddly enough, seemed to sober him for the moment.
"I find all this strange," he said heavily.

"You, my mother, would have suffered me to eat the fig which you declare is poisoned; a matter whereof you may know something.

But when the General Olaf offers to eat it in my place, with your own royal hand you dash it from his lips, as he dashed it from mine.

And there is another thing which is still more strange.

This Olaf, who also says the figs are poisoned, offered to eat one of them if I promised I would not do so, which means, if he is right, that he offered to give his life for mine.