what," they said, " shall we do to those scoundrels, those criminals? They are paupers, and if we kill them we pollute our hands with vile blood; they are ragged, they are slaves, they are peasants; if we beat them we disgrace not them, but ourselves; for they are not worthy of the gilded Roman flail and of such punishments. Oh would that one were a bishop, another a margrave! For sewing them in sacks, after stinging blows with whips, after plucking out their beards or their hair, they would be thrown into the sea. But these," they said, " may continue to live; and, until the holy emperor of the Eomans, Nicephorus, learns of this atrocity, they may languish in narrow confinement."
When I learned this I considered them happy because poor, myself unhappy because rich. When I was at home, my desire was to excuse my poverty; but placed in Constantinople, fear itself taught me that I had the wealth of a Croesus. Poverty had always seemed burdensome to me—then it seemed welcome, acceptable, desirable; yes, desirable, since it keeps its votaries from perishing, its followers from being flayed. And since at Constantinople alone this poverty thus defends its votaries, may it there alone be considered worth striving after!
The papal messengers, therefore, being thrown into prison, that offending epistle was sent to Nicephorus in Mesopotamia; whence no one returned to bring an answer until the second day before the Ides of September (Sept. 12). On that day it came, but its import was concealed from me. And after two days—on the eighteenth day, namely, before the Calends of October (Sept. 14)—I brought it about by prayers and gifts that I might adore the life-giving and salvation-bringing cross. And there in the great crowd, unnoticed by the guards, certain persons approached me, and rendered my saddened heart joyful through stolen words.
But on the fifteenth day before the Calends of October (Sept. 17), as much dead as alive, I was summoned to the palace. And when I came into the presence of the patrician Christophorus—the eunuch, receiving me kindly, rose to meet me with three others. Their discourse began as follows: "The pallor in thy face, the emaciation of thy
