Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/515

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 493 to rest in the vain security of ia^norance, abandoned the feeble monarch, with some priests and pag'es, to the terrors of a sleep- less nifjht. These terrors were quickly realised by the hostile shouts which proclaimed the titles and victory of Andronicus the Young'er ; and the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an image of the Virgin, dispatched a suppliant message to resign the sceptre and to obtain his life at the hands of the conqueror. The answer of his grandson was decent and pious ; at the prayer of his friends, the younger Andronicus assumed the sole administration ; but the elder still enjoyed the name and pre-eminence of the first emperor, the use of the great palace, and a pension of twenty-four thousand pieces of gold, one half of which was assigned on the royal treasure, and the other on the fishery of Constantinople. But his impotence was soon exposed to contempt and oblivion : the vast silence of the palace was disturbed only by the cattle and poultry of the neighbourhood, Avhich roved with impunity through the solitary courts ; and a reduced allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold ^^ was all that he could ask and m.ore than he could hope. His calamities were embittered by the gradual extinction of sight : his confinement was rendered each day more rigorous ; and during the absence and sickness of his grandson, his inhuman keepers, by the threats of instant death, compelled him to ex- chansre the purple for the monastic habit and profession. The t-*°- ^^^^ monk Aiifony had renounced the pomp of the world : yet he had occasion for a coarse fur in the winter-season ; and. as wine was forbidden by his confessor, and water by his physician, the sherbet of Ecrvpt Avas his common drink. It was not without difficulty that the late emperor could procure three or four pieces to satisfv these simple wants : and. if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more painful distress of a friend, the sacrifice is of some weight in the scale of humanity and religion. Four years after his abdication, Andronicus, or Antony, expired in a ^-J,'*^^*^' cell, in the seventy-fourth year of his age; and the last strain I'ei' i3 of adulation could only promise a more splendid crown of glory in heaven than he had enjoyed upon earth. ^^ " I have endeavoured to reconcile the 24,000 T/c^. 12,000! pieces of Cantacuzene (1. ii. c. i. Tvol. i. p. 311, ed. Bonn^) with the 10.000 of Nicephorus Gre^ora«; (1. ix. c. 2) ; the one of whom wished to soften, the other to matrnify, the hardships of the old emperor. i-See Nicephorus Gregoras fl. ix. 6-8, 10, 14:!. x. c. i). The historian had tasted of the prosperity, and shared the retreat, of his henefactor ; and that friend- ship, which " waits or to the scaffold or the cell," should not lifjhtly be accused as " a hireling, a prostitute to praise".