Murtzuphlus, finding his troops discouraged, had retired to the Bucoleon palace, where Euphrosyne and Eudocia awaited the issue. He had lost, he said; and from the palace quay, where the stone lion and bull, which gave the place its name, had witnessed so many flights, they took ship and sped in the direction of Thrace. The ex-Emperor Alexis would surely welcome his wife and daughter, and he would feel little tenderness in regard to the murder of his perfidious nephew. Murtzuphlus arrived in confidence at the ex-Emperor’s new home, and was received in apparent friendliness. For some reason, however, which is not very clear, Alexis concealed under his friendly appearance a deadly and murderous hatred of the adventurer. It seems to me that, if a marriage had really taken place between Eudocia and Murtzuphlus, Alexis regarded it as invalid. He ordered a bath to be prepared for his daughter and Murtzuphlus, and, when the young officer had entered it, sent in his servants to put out his eyes. Eudocia, we are told, stood at the door angrily upbraiding her father, and he turned upon her with language which leaves little doubt as to her character. I may add that the blind adventurer was captured by the Latins, as he wandered miserably about the provinces. He was taken to Constantinople and flung from the top of one of the loftiest columns in one of the public squares of the city. In order to follow the further fortunes of our ex-Empresses we must turn back for a moment to Constantinople. After they had allowed their soldiers to loot and rape with impunity--to perpetrate, with the aid of their camp-followers and prostitutes, a veritable orgy of desecration in the most sacred shrine of the Greeks--for several days, the leaders of the Crusade met to divide the spoil. Twelve electors, chosen from amongst themselves, were in future to appoint the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, and its territories were to be distributed among his feudal supporters and the Venetians. Baldwin of Flanders was chosen to be the first Emperor of the new series. His most serious competitor was the commander of the army, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, who had occupied the Bucoleon palace, but the shrewd Doge of Venice had preferred to set on the throne a prince whose native seat was at a safer distance from Venice and Greece. Boniface had to be content with the title of King of Saloniki and such territory in Macedonia and Greece as he could wrest from, and hold against, the Greeks.