Manuel had the vices, as well as the virtues, of a Western knight; Irene had no vices, and her virtues were old-fashioned. The emergence of these modest and tender young women, such as the last two Irenes, from the Courts of central Europe warns us to refrain from thinking that chivalry everywhere meant gaiety and licence of conduct. Irene had no love of luxury or of the breaking of lances. Such comeliness as she had she declined to adorn with perfumes and fine silks, placing her ideal in the practice of Church virtues and the quiet performance of a mother’s duties. But Manuel had the eye and the blood of unrestrained youth, and he soon wandered from his cold and passive spouse to other women of the Court. His elder brother, Andronicus, had left three fascinating daughters, and two of these were of a temper to welcome the freer and livelier spirit which Manuel encouraged. The eldest of the three, Maria, confined herself to a sober marriage, but Theodora became the acknowledged lover of the Emperor (her uncle), and the youngest, Eudocia, was even more flagrantly connected with the Emperor’s cousin, Andronicus, one of the most handsome, most daring and most unscrupulous nobles of the time. Andronicus, who in time ascended the throne, will engage us, with his lady-loves, presently. For the moment we have only to note that the Comneni princesses lived at Court without a pretence of restraint. Manuel frowned when he heard that his cousin met what little expostulation was made with the cheerful assurance that he felt it his duty to imitate the example and copy the taste of his sovereign; but Manuel had himself too little self-control to dismiss Theodora. The clergy were at the time too corrupt and subservient to interfere, and the courtiers are contemptuously dismissed by the historian Finlay as “a herd of knaves.” The chief minister, a keen financier and most successful extortioner, was known to sell in the market, even two or three times over, the choice fish or game which suitors presented to him. The favourite minister, John Camateros, was a handsome man of gigantic stature, who enjoyed the repute of drinking more wine, and retaining a clearer head, than any man of his time. He won a bet off the Emperor by emptying at two draughts an immense porphyry vase full of water.