“Come kill this man,” she cried; and then to Michael: “Who will say masses for you?” and “I would Theodora was here.” Basil drew a little sword with a snake for a handle and Michael shrieked, whereon the woman caught him by his long hair and held him so while the Macedonian plunged the weapon past the topaz Gorgon into his heart; then they both cast him down and struck at him with their feet, even while his breast heaved and his eyes moved, and fled together into the outer chamber. “To Constantinople,” said Basil, and he embraced Eudocia and kissed her, after which she veiled her face with violet and left them. The blood on her feet was almost the last thing I saw. For Basil found me crawling by the wall; and they took me out and blinded me and sent me here.… Michael is buried in Chrysopolis, and his soul is in Hell; and Eudocia was an Empress and mother of the Leo who rules now, and no one but I knows that she was there that night … therefore set these things down, for I, who am an old blind monk, shall soon be in Paradise clad warmly in starred brocade and cambric fine enough to go through a reed-joint, lying on a couch covered with soft-coloured woollens, and under my feet a carpet like was woven in the Peloponnesus to cover the mosaic in the church Basil built to assuage God’s wrath at the murder of Michael. Did you ever hear of it? It was one great peacock with a spread tail.… I spoke to a man who had seen it.… So I in Paradise, near, as I said to the gate (stately as the Adrianople Gate with the church of St. Diomed near by), shall peep down and see the Emperors, Leos, Constantines, Michaels, howling in Hell, and in the midst Basil and the woman Eudocia, while fiends swing before them censers of dull earth filled with sulphurs.… * * * * * So on Christmas Eve I take this down from an ancient monk who was chamberlain once at the court of Michael III. and sometimes wanders in his mind. Now he is fallen asleep, and the chants are over, and I will write no more. God guard us all from evil. Amen. Signed by Theophilus, a little scribe in the Monastery of St. John, Armenia, Christmas Eve, 899. THE PRISONER SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF ZELL “George I. was married to his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, daughter of the Duke of Zell; accused of an intrigue with a Swedish adventurer, she was repudiated by her husband and imprisoned in a castle in Hanover for thirty-two years previous to her death in 1729.”–_History of England._ December darkened over the dark flats outside Schloss Ahlden; the sluggish gray river, the barren gray road stretched into the bitter mist; above the stunted alders and broken reeds the plovers circled mournfully.