When war arose between Venice and Genoa, Stephen sent envoys to Orkhan to propose a union of the Serbian and Ottoman armies for a campaign against Constantinople. The marriage of his daughter to Orkhan’s son was to seal the alliance. Orkhan accepted this proposal. An embassy was immediately sent to Stephen to arrange the details of the alliance. But Cantacuzenos determined to prevent this change of Orkhan’s allegiance by a most drastic measure. He did not fear the anger of Orkhan as greatly as he feared a union between Orkhan and Dushan. The Ottoman envoys were ambushed. Some were killed. Those who escaped, together with the presents destined for Stephen, were taken to Demotika.[183] Neither Stephen nor Orkhan tried to reopen the negotiations. They realized that their ambitions were too nearly identical to permit a harmonious agreement as to a division of the spoils. Macedonia was as hard to divide in the fourteenth century as it is in the twentieth. After 1351 Stephen watched to see what effect the war between Venice and Genoa was going to have upon his fortunes. He also intrigued, as Orkhan was doing, in the civil war of the Byzantines. These were his Capuan days. They were fatal to the fame of Stephen--outside of the Serbian folk-lore! The first expedition of Orkhan’s son Soleiman, in 1353, so alarmed Stephen that he tried to become reconciled to the Orthodox Church. He sent an embassy to Constantinople, but the patriarch refused his blessing until Stephen had renounced the title of emperor and his conquests east of the Vardar.[184] Stephen could not do this. Nor could he wait longer. If he did not strike quickly, the Osmanlis would be in his path. He took what was now a gambler’s chance. With eighty thousand men he started for Constantinople. Death claimed him on the second day of the march.[185] The Serbian Empire did not outlive its founder. X The public life of John Cantacuzenos was contemporary almost to the year with that of Stephen Dushan. He was associated with Andronicus III in the capacity of grand chancellor and confidential adviser throughout the decade which saw the loss of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Shortly after he had succeeded in deposing his grandfather, Andronicus III was taken with a violent fever. His crime-stained mind could not rid itself of the idea that he was going to die, even after he had become convalescent. He solicited Cantacuzenos to assume the imperial purple. He wanted to abdicate and take monk’s orders. A drink from a miraculous spring gave him a new grip on life.[186] For eleven years he lived on, in every crisis irresolute, in every disaster unkingly, bending always before the stronger will of Cantacuzenos. In 1341, at the early age of forty-five, his worthless life ended. His legacy to the Empress Anna and his child heir was the guardianship of his ‘friend and counsellor, John Cantacuzenos’. The grand chancellor accepted the regency with alacrity.[187]