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 and a diplomatist, but he appears to have been a really faithful servant. He must have known both Greeks and Turks thoroughly. He had been on many an embassy to the sultan, and more than once had outwitted his ministers. On one occasion he made them look very foolish by making them drunk at one of his entertainments, and then getting hold of some state papers in their possession. Having ascertained the contents, he quietly and politely put the papers back into the Turks' pockets. This is just what we might have expected from a Greek. Phranza, as a minister in a difficult time, must have been invaluable. He certainly is invaluable as a historian of a period which, but for his chronicle written long afterwards in a monastery in Corfu, would be much less distinctly known to us. It is indeed a great thing to have a contemporary record from a man who had so many excellent opportunities. Phranza witnessed with his own eyes the fall of Constantinople, and if his narrative is apt to be rather too prolix and grandiloquent, we may at any rate congratulate ourselves that the story of that memorable event as told by such an eyewitness has come down to us.