IT was one of the supreme moments in the world’s history, the death-day of a great empire. The city of Constantine was in the hands of the Ottoman. Through long, slow ages had the glory of the Eastern Cæsars waned and paled, until the very name of Greek, with all its glorious traditions, had become almost a synonym for the mean and treacherous vices of unscrupulous weakness. Luxury, licentiousness, fraud, and discord had eaten out the heart of the Eastern Empire. Sadder yet, the light that was in her had become darkness. The Eastern Church had stiffened into clay, slain by the frozen breath of formalism and superstition. The Scribes and Pharisees, who sat in the seat of Chrysostom the golden-mouthed, tithed mint and anise and cumin, they fought about the use of the razor or the composition of the consecrated wafer, while they omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth. Proud of their jealous orthodoxy, they too often forgot to regard the Triune God, whose mysterious nature they were so careful to define, as the living object of faith and love. Proud of their resistance to the adoration of what they technically styled imagen, they were quite as guilty as their Western brethren of worshipping idols which could neither see, nor hear, nor walk: Thus the Church was ripe for the judgments of God; and the State―the old Byzantine Empire―was falling to pieces from its own corruption, before the deadly sweep of the Ottoman scimitar chased it into the gulf of things that have passed away forever. For there is no resurrection for dead empires. They are judged here and now.
Who shall say why a falling state or a falling cause so often robes itself for death in new dignity and glory? Gleams of moral grandeur shine forth, tempting us to think that, if shown a little earlier, they might have averted the doom, which they only come in time to make us weep over. Not of an individual alone has it been often true that―
“Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving of it.”
If we look the stern Muse of History steadfastly in the face, we shall sometimes see, even in her saddest moments, a smile pass over it, as though she knew the end of the Lord, that He is pitiful and of tender mercy. Often has He turned away His wrath from the vanquished, in the midst of their calamities, and “spoken comfortably” to that very generation which has received from His hand double for all her sins, and the sins of progenitors tenfold more guilty. Many a monarch has found a more bitter, but pone a more honorable death than the last Constantine and last Cæsar of the Greeks. It is a noble figure that meets our view, kneeling in prayerful vigil on the tessellated pavement of St. Sophia, receiving the memorials of his Divine Master’s love, asking pardon humbly of all whom he had wronged, and then going forth, resolved to die for his people and with them; as he did―for after the assault, the body of Constantine was found by the victorious foe “where the dead were lying thickest.”
But the broad stream of a nation’s destiny is ever breaking into innumerable ripples of individual life. The day that saw the Empire of the Eastern Cæsars overthrown, witnessed also the terror and agony of whole population. Each unit in the crowded city had a tale of wrong and suffering, or of hair-breadth escape and joyful deliverance. The horrors of a great city taken by storm are utterly beyond our conception, and we have, happily, no help from experience―so we can but try to look through the eyes of a few of those who were themselves actors or sufferers.
Into a small obscure church in a poor quarter faithful slaves had borne their wounded master, and laid him down to die. Count Raymond Chalcondyles, a knight, a “Roman,” and one of Constantine’s most devoted personal adherents, sought death by his master’s side, until, already mortally wounded, he was forced by the stream of fugitives through the breach in the inner wall, just rescued from being trodden to death, and carried to the little church, which was comparatively a place of safety, because too poor to tempt conquerors who had all the wealth of Byzantium at their feet. It was filled with a crowd of terrified women and children, but the picture-covered screen usual in Greek churches separated these from the dying man, who lay near the altar, on a couch made of church vestments hastily piled together. The priest knelt beside him, repeating prayers and psalms, and occasionally giving him a little wine from a chalice. The last rites of his Church had been already performed.
The dying knight was restless; his head turned wearily from side to side, his eyes sought the opening in the screen. “No one comes,” he murmured. “Not yet― Have I done wrong to send for them?”
“Calm yourself, my lord,” the priest entreated; “think of your own soul.”
“The best that could be done―the surest hiding place that could be found―this little church,” the knight persisted. “But oh! my son―my son!” He writhed in worse than bodily anguish as he saw before him the dead face of his gallant son, and thought of the dangers, more terrible than death, which that son’s wife and child were braving even now. His faithful and favorite servant, who was also his foster brother, had undertaken, at his earnest request, the dangerous mission of bringing them, in the disguise of slaves and by a circuitous route, from their own stately dwelling to this obscure place of refuge. In all the crowded city no spot was so full of peril that day as the marble palace of a patrician.
There was a pause. The dying warrior prayed in silence that these dear ones might not, at least, be taken alive. The priest murmured a psalm.
“‘O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them.’”
All at once the dim eyes of Chalcondyles brightened, and he half raised himself, exclaiming, “Thank God! they come, they come!”
As he fell back, an old man, leading a boy by the hand, passed through the opening of the screen. “Thy lady, Manuel?” he questioned, anxiously.
“Safe―God and the saints be praised!” said the slave. “But, my lord, she hath swooned. I have left her in the care of the women. Here is our little lord.”
The boy, a noble, manly little fellow of vine or ten, would have shown a courage worthy of his race had there been only danger to meet, but the presence of death, now seen for the first time, struck an awe into his spirit. He gazed around him with an amazed, frightened look in his eyes, and clung to the servant’s robe.
“Raymond, come hither!” said his grandfather. And Raymond, hearing the voice he loved, subdued his awe so far as to obey immediately Spellbound by the solemn change in the dear familiar face, he did not weep, but stood, pale and trembling, beside the couch. He was remarkably beautiful, his form and features cast in the classic mold of the perfect Greek, with the fair complexion, golden hair, and blue eyes prized the more for their rarity, and the grace of free, happy, healthy childhood in every look and movement. Evidently accustomed to obedience, a sign from the knight made him kneel down close beside him, and take the cup from the hand. of the. priest, who retired to a little distance.
“Thou art but a child,” said the dying man, in a low voice; “yet I must speak to thee, and thou must hear me, as though thou wert a man. For thy father is dead, I am dying, and thy mother lies unconscious. And thou, Raymond Chalcondyles, art left the only one on earth to bear that honored name. Thou understandest?”
“I do,” sobbed the child; for at the words, “Thy father is dead,” grief mastered awe, and he wept.
“Listen then. This good priest will hide you here―you and your mother―with his own wife and children, until you can be sent with safety to Galata, and put on board a Genoese or Venetian ship. Our faithful Manuel has sworn never to leave you; and should the Infidel―which God forbid ―he knows what to do. Remember, ‘tis but one stroke; it will not hurt you. But, God sending you safe to Venice, I have already, foreseeing this ruin, forwarded a sum of money, with a few books and jewels, to my good friend, the banker Benedetto. The money and jewels will maintain you; keep the books if you can. Obey your mother in all things, and should you be in distress or perplexity, ask counsel of Benedetto, for he is a wise man, and you may trust him utterly.”
As he seemed to pause for an answer, Raymond said, still weeping, “I will do all you say, dear grandfather.”
“Be a scholar. Remember thou art a Greek, heir to all that Grecian men have thought and done in the olden days. Yet not all Greek―Give me the wine.” Raymond obeyed.
“I grow faint; yet there is that which must be said. Bend thine head close, Raymond, and I charge thee, forget not a word. It is a secret handed down in our house from father to son, never trusted to any keeping cave that of the heir of Chalcondyles. Thou knowest we have an ancestor, a Frank, a Crusader?”
“Yes,” said Raymond promptly. Young as he was, he knew his pedigree very well, and was very proud of it. “Raymond de Guiscard, Lord of Vaudelon, espoused the daughter of the great Chalcondyles. Their son―”
“Enough. Now listen: That Raymond de Guiscard owned, and lost, a rich inheritance.”
“I know―Vaudelon is a stately castle, with a noble estate―vineyards, olive yards, cornfields―in fair Provence, the best land God has given the Franks.”
“I said owned and lost—lost it in a war righteous as ours against the Infidel, disastrous too as ours. Our ancestor resisted the tyrannical claims of the schismatic Latin Pope, as we orthodox Catholics do today. But De Guiscard’s castle was taken, his father slain, and he himself, a stripling, escaped with difficulty. Still, his rights remained, and have passed to us, his descendants. ― More wine, Raymond.”
Raymond, as he gave it, pondered what he could say to console his grandfather.
What was it that he would have him do? He made a bold guess. “Grandfather, when I am a man I will go to the King of the Franks, and ask him to do us right, and give back our inheritance.”
“Nay, my son; they who have kept it for two hundred years may keep it forever.”
“Then I will go to the Lord of Vaudelon, throw down my glove, and offer to fight him for it.”
“Hush! Listen now, and act hereafter when thou art a man. Closer―my words must be few. The last lord, foreseeing his ruin, buried in his lady’s rose garden a treasure of inestimable value. I know nothing for certain, but I suppose it to be a casket of jewels, priceless in worth and peerless in luster. Our ancestor used to call it the luck of Vaudelon, and to say that whoso had it had nothing left to wish for, that castle and lands were well lost for it, and little worth without it. His father showed him the spot, and he wrote out, for his children, a description exact enough to enable any one who seeks with care and diligence to find it, changed though the place may be. The fragment of parchment is here, in my reliquary, with a lock of the blessed St. Anna’s hair. Take it, wear it always, and lose it only with thy life.” He placed a small, curiously wrought gold casket in the child’s hand.
“Thou canst not read it now, for it is in our ancestor’s native tongue, which he called the tongue of Oc. But when thou art a man,―learn, read, seek, win,―and God be with thee. Till then, tell no one.”
“Save my mother. I have never kept secret from her yet. Say I may tell my mother!”
“Well, she is discreet and virtuous. But none else; not even Manuel. And now farewell. God bless thee Be true to Him and to the Faith.”
“Dear grandfather,” said the boy earnestly, “we are going among the wicked Latin schismatics; must I touch the accursed thing?” He meant the azyme, the unleavened bread, or wafer, used by the Latina in the Eucharist. So early may the iron of fanaticism enter into the soul; or, rather, so easily does the plastic material of a child’s mind receive impressions from those around.
“Do, as child, what thy mother bids thee; judge, as man, for thyself. Now kiss me, lip to lip. Thou art like thy father, and thy father’s mother. No, no more wine. Is Manuel there? My eyes groom dim.”
Manuel was there, and drew near his lord. Soon another glided in, strangely disguised in the capote of a slave or peasant, but with the face of a high-born lady, beautiful, though wild and wan. It was not lawful for a woman to come within the screen, but in that moment of agony and confusion the law was disregarded. The priest approached also, a sacred picture in his hand, which he held to the lips of the dying knight.
There was a solemn pause. Without was tumultuous noise―the shouts of those who slew and plundered, the cries of those who sought for mercy. Neither reached the closing ear of the dying man. He trembled no more for the living, he mourned no more for the dead. All things grew pale and dim. Even the rites and ordinances of his Church, oven the forms and ceremonies that shut his soul in and closed around it like a cloud, seemed to melt and vanish away. Did One draw near instead, whose Face turns darkness into light? Feebly, from failing lips, the murmur came― “Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison me.” And with that prayer, Chalcondyles passed into the presence of the Lord of Mercy.
A few days later Raymond and his mother were conveyed safely on board a Venetian ship, and bade a long farewell to the Golden Horn and the smiling shores of the Bosphorus.