I saw much that was splendid: the wealth and the hubbub of Venice, the ancient monuments of Rome and the sunshine and blue sea of Naples. I became aware of everything with open eyes and, applying my will and my knowledge to them, did not miss any of the things that my daylight paths offered. I spoke before princes and the senates of proud republics and my efforts for the health and good of my noble home town did not go unrewarded. Now all that is behind me. These are my twilight years. In May of the year 1453 Constantinople fell into the hands of a pagan foe. The half moon of Diana, the crest of Byzantium, stood upon the Turkish field insignia against the cross of Christendom. But the books and parchment rolls, written out laboriously by the hands of monks and scribes, the noble manuscripts our good friend Michael Groland, when we were young, elbowed off the table in the garden bower, were put into the hands of humanity at large by the new art of printing. Tolle! Lege! Master Theodoros Antoniades was spared the experience of the total collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire, but he saw the first printed book and had wise things to say about it. The Holy Roman Empire's crown is still in Nuremberg. Who will once again bring honour to it in the world? End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Imperial Crown, by Wilhelm Raabe