This unfortunate family proceeded, filled with fear, meeting at every step soldiers greedy of pillage, who ill-treated the Greeks they plundered, and threatened every woman with insult. Nicetas, and some of his friends who had come to join him, carried their children in their arms, the only wealth that Heaven had left them; and defended alone by the pity which their despair and misery inspired. They walked together, placing their wives and daughters in the centre, after having advised the youngest to blacken their faces with earth. In spite of this precaution, the beauty of one young girl attracted the attention of a soldier, and she was borne away from the arms of her father, weighed down by age and infirmities. Nicetas, touched by the tears of the old man, flew after the ravisher, and addressing himself to all the warriors he met, he implored their pity, and conjured them, in the name of Heaven, the protector of virtue, in the name of their own families, to snatch a daughter from dishonour, to save a father from despair. The Frank warriors were affected by his prayer, and the unfortunate father soon saw his daughter restored to him, the only hope of his exile, the last consolation of his grey hairs. Nicetas and his companions in trouble encountered still further dangers, but at length got safely out of Constantinople by the Golden Gate, happy at being able to quit a country so lately the object of all their affections. The generous Venetian received their blessings, and in return prayed Heaven to protect them in their exile. Nicetas, with tears, embraced his liberator, whom he never had the good fortune to see again; then casting a look upon Constantinople, upon his unhappy country, he addressed to it these touching complaints, which express the griefs of his exile, and which he himself has transmitted to us:[135]—“O Queen of Cities, what power has been able to separate us from thee! What consolation shall we find on issuing from thy walls, as naked as we issued from the bosom of our mothers! Become the sport of strangers, the companions of wild animals that inhabit the forests, we shall never again visit thy august domes, and can only fly with terror around thee, like sparrows round the spot where their nest has been destroyed.” Nicetas arrived with his family at Cylindria, and afterwards retired to Nice, where he employed himself in retracing the history of the misfortunes of his country.