ntious conduct lost all bounds. Alexius
ordered her paramour to be assassinated, and the female slaves and the
eunuchs of her household were put to the torture. The beautiful and
accomplished Euphrosyne was compelled to leave the palace, and, like so
many imperial dames noted for their devotion or their license, was
immured in a convent.

The court, however, soon missed her talents and energy; Alexius himself
was not equal to the ordinary duties of his office; the courtiers were
unrestrained in their peculations, and nowhere was there a restraining
hand. Euphrosyne was recalled to save the dynasty, and, with even more
than her former insolence, she entered once more upon a career of
extravagance and shame. While her energy and skill in the affairs of
state won admiration, her lavish expenditures of the public funds
excited the dismay of the few thoughtful men of the day. The crowd
enjoyed the splendid spectacle of her hunting parties and applauded
their empress as she rode along on her richly caparisoned steed, with a
falcon perched on her gold-embroidered glove, but such extravagances
were but hastening the end of the doomed city.

The rest of the story is but too quickly told. Alexius
III.,--Angelus,--had, by a clever coup d'etat, displaced his brother
Isaac; Alexius IV., son of Isaac, implored outside aid, and gave the
marauders of the fourth Crusade an excuse to attack the city. Alexius
III. fled for his life, and Alexius IV., after a brief reign, was caught
and strangled by the usurper, Alexius Ducas. The Crusaders assaulted and
sacked Constantinople when Alexius V., Ducas, the last of the emperors,
fled in a galley by night, taking with him the Empress Euphrosyne and
her daughter Eudocia whom he had married. He was afterward captured,
tried for the murder of the young Alexius, and suffered death by being
hurled from the top of a lofty pillar.

The end of Euphrosyne and her daughter Eudocia is not known. The latter
had already had a sufficiently tragical history. Eudocia had first been
married to Simeon, King of Servia, who later abdicated the throne and
retired to a monastery. His son Stephen, enamored of the beauty of his
young stepmother, married her. Later, a disgraceful quarrel arose.
Eudocia was divorced by her second husband and, almost naked, was
expelled from the palace.

In her desperate condition, abandoned by all, she would probably have
perished had not Fulk, the king's brother, taken pity on her a