So said, so done. From the dawn of the next day to the same day's dusk Argathona sat at the feet of the soldier of fortune and listened while he spoke. He told her of the world as he knew it, a fair world made for Frenchmen to rule. He told her of its kings and its captains, and of the names and lineages and lives of those who now lorded it in Greece. Because he had a shrewd wit, with caustic words to lackey it, he made his tongue's puppets live more human than they always showed in knightly histories and monkish scripts. He painted frank pictures of great ladies, too; told truths of the customs of men with women and of women with men, and little doubting that he was doing aught to distinguish with praise, proved himself an excellent chronicler. But of the great faith of the world he spoke scantly and dully, caring for it little, understanding it less, and taking it for granted tranquilly as him seemed a soldier should. On her side, Argathona, keen to learn much about the living things she had to play with and strive against, eager to teach her age-long ignorance the game of the gray world, she had very little curiosity about the faith that had banished the gods of her infancy. And so she listened and learned much and learned little, and one more Attic day of all her wealth of days waxed and waned and left her as it found her, divinely young. XI THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY From the days when the Christian faith was born in Galilee of Judea, from the days when Hellas became portion and parcel of the Roman empire, the glory of Athens dwindled and withered through the centuries for more than a thousand years. Paul preached. Nero plundered. Philopappus patronized. Hadrian adorned. Herodes commemorated the loved and lost Regilla. Neo-Platonism persuaded its followers that the lamp of the Academy was still alight. The terror of the north swept upon the city as Spartan and Persian had swept upon her, only more bloody and more merciless than both, to be beaten back for a season by the waning strength of the Roman arms. The gleaming image of Athena stayed the rage of the triumphant Alaric, but could not stay the envy of Constantinople. Byzantium stripped Athens of her riches; Byzantium silenced the voices of her philosophers. Gloom of night settled upon the sacred place for generations till, after the fourth crusade and the fall of Constantinople, Boniface of Montserrat came to turn the Parthenon from a Greek church to a Roman Catholic cathedral, and the city of Theseus into a Frankish duchy. In the dawn of the thirteenth century Otho of the Rock became grand sire of Athens, and he and the descendants of his house ruled for a century, till the time came for Baldwin to take the throne.