From these pleasant girlish traits we pass to the inevitable struggle with Pulcheria. Theodosius remained an Imperial nonentity. He could hunt, paint, and carve, but public business so bored him that he signed documents without reading them. One day Pulcheria put a parchment before him, and he, as usual, blindly appended his name. Shortly afterwards he summoned Eudocia, and was told that she was now the slave of Pulcheria, and awaited _her_ orders. The document he had signed was a deed of sale of his wife, but it does not appear that the little stratagem made much impression on him. Pulcheria still held the reins. Eudocia had her first child at the end of 422, and was, in the following January, entitled Augusta. The court had a visit, too, from the Empress of the West, Galla Placidia, and her daughter, and large matters were discussed. In 433 we may, perhaps, trace some influence of Eudocia on legislation. An edict imposing the death-sentence on the remaining pagans may be confidently ascribed to Pulcheria; but an edict reforming and enlarging the higher schools of Constantinople seems rather to remind us of the Athenian scholar’s daughter. She occupied much of her leisure in writing historical and religious poetry, and the little that survives of it has been recently edited by Ludwich. It is correct in form and devoid of inspiration. The years passed tranquilly until 437, when we begin to suspect that there is friction with Pulcheria. Few things had happened, beyond the echo of the stormy movements of the West, and the disquieting advance of the Huns, to disturb the life of the court. One year (434) had, indeed, brought a strange thrill into the Imperial nunnery. A princess of the Western Empire, Honoria, came to Constantinople, _enceinte_ by her own steward. But the hard lot of Honoria, and the romantic devices by which she sought to enliven it, will occupy us later. Pulcheria promptly enclosed the fiery young princess in a convent, and the scandal would be mentioned only in whispers. Three years later (437) the Western Emperor, Valentinian III, came to Constantinople, and led away Eudocia’s beautiful daughter, Licinia Eudoxia, to share his trembling throne. The next detail is that, in 439, Eudocia made a lengthy pilgrimage to Palestine, and there can be little doubt that her absence from the palace for a year--which is unconvincingly connected by Gibbon with the marriage of her daughter, two years before--was due, in part or entirely, to some quarrel with either Theodosius or Pulcheria, most probably the latter.