At the same time her condition became more unpleasant, because Michael’s illness became worse. The popular belief in Constantinople was that a devil had invaded the Emperor, to punish him for his mendacious denial, to Romanus, of intimacy with Zoe. Men told of the suddenness with which the quiet, rosy-cheeked Emperor would be, at any moment, converted into a frothing maniac, and it was noticed that, on the rare occasions on which he appeared on the throne, purple curtains were looped in readiness about it, and servants stood to draw them round the throne if the devil should choose that moment to indulge his frolics. Even the Byzantine writers take this theory seriously; though some of them offer the alternative theory of insanity. We recognize the symptoms of epilepsy, and see that Zoe’s choice had failed. Between the attacks Michael, who seems to have believed in the devil, was gloomy and penitent. He and his brothers walked barefoot through the city, at the head of processions, bearing the swaddling-clothes of the infant Christ and all the other priceless relics I have mentioned; but the only answer of the heavens was a storm of such hail that the stones crashed through the tiled roofs. He visited shrines, built churches and monasteries, showered gold on the clergy, and even gave a baptism-fee to every new-born babe; and famine, pestilence and earthquake vexed the over-burdened Empire, and men cursed Michael and his brothers. At length dropsy was added to epilepsy, and Michael determined to resign and enter a monastery. Zoe seems by this time to have been completely cowed by the arrogant monk, and she made little opposition when he went on to provide a new and strange aspirant to the throne. His sister Maria was, as I said, married to a ship-caulker named Stephen, who had been put in command of the fleet. They had a boy named Michael, a vicious youth, but young enough to submit to his uncle’s rule if he obtained the crown, and the Emperor and Zoe were persuaded or coerced to adopt this child and clothe him with the dignity of Cæsar. One of the chroniclers tells that they deceived Zoe by representing the boy as the son of a noble matron. Some such fiction may have been served to the populace, but Zoe could hardly be deceived on the point; and even the people were not long deceived, if at all, since he has passed into history as Michael the Caulker. In the chapel at Blachernæ the boy was accepted into the imperial family, after swearing the customary ponderous oaths to respect Zoe as his mother and mistress. It is not impossible that Zoe felt that this adoption of a son who was to wear the crown made her own position more secure.