It is just to add that Andronicus made a sincere attempt to improve the administration of justice in the Empire, but apart from this one sincere and fruitless effort at reconstruction he danced down the road of death like all his frivolous subjects. A little war, the suppression of a rebellion or two, and mighty hunting and jousting filled the thirteen years of his single reign. The Turk drew nearer and nearer, and received no very serious check. The city of Nicæa had now fallen into the hands of the Turks, and the crescent flashed on the shores of the Sea of Marmora. Andronicus could do little more than trust the old Byzantine weapon--intrigue, ruse, diplomacy. His sister Anna, who had married the Prince of Epirus, assassinated her husband and invited her brother to annex the territory. His daughter Irene, who had married the Emperor of Trebizond and found him unfaithful, assassinated her husband, and sent to Andronicus for a ruler. He was endeavouring to profit by these assassinations when death overtook him. Earlier in his reign the veteran Sir Janni had rebelled. Andronicus, knowing the mettle of his opponent, had fortified and victualled the palace, where he left Anna and her boy, and gone out to the field; but he removed the danger in the end by deception and assassination. At length, in the early summer of 1341, Andronicus became alarmingly ill. He shrewdly put off his stained purple and retired to a monastery, in preparation for death, and he passed away on 15th June, leaving Anna with two boys of nine and four years. Then began the romance of Anna of Savoy. The chief personæ of the romance, apart from the Empress, are the ambitious intriguers we have previously seen about the sickbed of Andronicus: the courtly and cultivated Cantacuzenus, the meaner though less hypocritical financier, Apocaucus, and the mother of Cantacuzenus. Theodora Paleologina was, as her name implies, herself a member of the Paleologi family. She was a descendant of Martha, the sister and counsellor of Michael Paleologus, the virile lady who had been put in a sack with cats by Theodore Lascaris: a strong and able and ambitious woman, although, since her husband’s death, she had worn the robe of a nun. There was a complete understanding between her and her less resolute son. Apocaucus, on the other hand, an active, restless, unscrupulous little man, who slept little at nights, was prepared to ally himself with either Anna or the Cantacuzeni, as seemed most profitable.