ligion, and hurried on to his
difficult task.

Having passed Saint Sophia, the two travellers crossed the marble-paved
Augusteum, and saw upon their right the gilded gates of the hippodrome
through which a vast crowd of people was pressing, for though the
morning had been devoted to the religious ceremony, the afternoon was
given over to secular festivities. So great was the rush of the populace
that the two strangers had some difficulty in disengaging themselves
from the stream and reaching the huge arch of black marble which formed
the outer gate of the palace. Within they were fiercely ordered to halt
by a gold-crested and magnificent sentinel who laid his shining spear
across their breasts until his superior officer should give them
permission to pass. The abbot had been warned, however, that all
obstacles would give way if he mentioned the name of Basil the eunuch,
who acted as chamberlain of the palace and also as Parakimomen--a
high office which meant that he slept at the door of the Imperial
bed-chamber. The charm worked wonderfully, for at the mention of that
potent name the Protosphathaire, or Head of the Palace Guards, who
chanced to be upon the spot, immediately detached one of his soldiers
with instructions to convoy the two strangers into the presence of the
chamberlain.

Passing in succession a middle guard and an inner guard, the travellers
came at last into the palace proper, and followed their majestic guide
from chamber to chamber, each more wonderful than the last. Marbles and
gold, velvet and silver, glittering mosaics, wonderful carvings, ivory
screens, curtains of Armenian tissue and of Indian silk, damask from
Arabia, and amber from the Baltic--all these things merged themselves
in the minds of the two simple provincials, until their eyes ached and
their senses reeled before the blaze and the glory of this, the most
magnificent of the dwellings of man. Finally, a pair of curtains,
crusted with gold, were parted, and their guide handed them over to a
negro mute who stood within. A heavy, fat, brown-skinned man, with a
large, flabby, hairless face was pacing up and down the small apartment,
and he turned upon them as they entered with an abominable and
threatening smile. His loose lips and pendulous cheeks were those of
a gross old woman, but above them there shone a pair of dark malignant
eyes, full of fierce intensity of observation and judgment.

"You have entered the palace by using my name,