Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/467

Rh star approaches; Eos rises; he reflects in his glances the rays of the sun—he the pale death of the Saracens, Nicephorus the ruler." And accordingly they sang: "Long life to the ruler Nicephorus! Adore him, ye people, cherish him, bend the neck to him alone! "How much more truly might they have sung: "Come, thou burnt-out coal, thou fool; old woman in thy walk, wood-devil in thy look; thou peasant, thou frequenter of foul places, thou goatfoot, thou horn-head, thou double-limbed one; bristly, unruly, countrified, barbarian, harsh, hairy, a rebel, a Cappadocian! "And so, inflated by those lying fools, he enters St. Sophia, his masters the emperors following him from afar, and, with the kiss of peace, adoring him to the ground. His armour-bearer, with an arrow for a pen, places in the church the era which is in progress from the time when he began to reign, and thus those who did not then exist learn what the era is.

On this same day he ordered me to be his guest. Not thinking me worthy, however, to be placed above any of bis nobles, I sat in the fifteenth place from him, and without a tablecloth. Not only did no one of my suite sit at table, but not one of them saw even the house in which I was a guest. During which disgusting and foul meal, which was washed down with oil after the manner of drunkards, and moistened also with a certain other exceedingly bad fish liquor, he asked me many questions concerning your power, many concerning your dominions and your army. And when I had replied to him consequently and truly, "Thou liest," he said, "the soldiers of thy master do not know how to ride, nor do they know how to fight on foot; the size of their shields, the weight of their breast-plates, the length of their swords, and the burden of their helms permits them to fight in neither one way nor the other."

Then he added, smiling: "their gluttony also impedes them, for their God is their belly, their courage but wind, their bravery drunkenness. Their fasting means dissolution, their sobriety panic. Nor has thy master a number of fleets on the sea. I alone have a force of navigators; I will attack him with my ships, I will overrun his maritime cities with war, and those which are near the rivers I will reduce to ashes. And how, I ask, can he even on land