Hugh looked up at the face that hung over him, tender as a mother's.
"Ay, she is, indeed," he said contentedly. "Now am I happy, for I have my dear lady and you, fair lord, my father, and the best comrades that ever a man knew."
CHAPTER XXVI
LORDS OF THE WORLD
Constantinople had fallen. Murtzuphlus abandoned his first intention of holding the Palace of the Bucoleon as a citadel of last resort and fled in the night. The next day the entire city was occupied by the Crusaders. From the Golden Horn to the Golden Gate the capital of the Eastern Empire—by actual fact the capital of the Christian world—was in their possession. The prize was the richest won by any army of their time—money, jewels, vessels of gold and silver, the costliest cloths and furs, works of art such as existed nowhere else in Europe, all the hoarded accumulation of centuries of conquest and security.
Every lord of the host had a palace assigned to him for his residence; every knight won a fortune; every sergeant and shipman of the fleet received enough to make him independent. The chiefs gave strict commands that order should be established and the lives and property of citizens respected; but it was impossible immediately to secure full recognition of this obligation. Only when punishments were inaugurated for those who abused their power was anarchy at an end. The Count of St. Paul hung one of his knights with his shield around his neck as a lesson to other marauders, and sergeants and camp followers were flogged.
So complete was the triumph of the host that men were bewildered by it. They wandered through the miles of streets of the city, gazing at the public parks, the cisterns like lakes, the hundreds of stately churches, the baths fitted up with a luxury unknown in the West, the palaces of the nobles and merchant-princes, the schools and colleges, and most of all at the tremendous walls. It was size and grandeur which impressed these rude Frankish warriors. Few among them had any conception of the store of art and learning at their feet, which outweighed in value the material wealth which committees of Crusaders and Venetians were reckoning and distributing.
Now and then a churchman joined with Hugh in admiration of a statue showing that pure outline of form which distinguished Greek sculpture of the golden age. There were thousands of statues, marble, porphyry, granite and bronze, scattered about the city. Every square or forum, the porticoes which lined the principal thoroughfares and market-places, the fountains, the public buildings, were decorated with them. Some were monumental in proportions like the bronze equestrian statue of Justinian, mounted on a structure of seven arches, in the Augustaion. Some were exquisite miniature representations of Pagan gods and goddesses.
Hugh found more among the clerks who appreciated the contents of the libraries of the palaces, the Senate, the churches and monasteries. Constantinople was the treasure-house of the learning of the ancient world. The complete works of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, poets, mathematicians, dramatists and historians were ranged on the library shelves of the capital. Manuscripts of priceless worth were common in the schools. Hugh could scarcely restrain his delight when he found himself able to secure the books of men of the past whom he had known only by their names or monkish corruptions of their liquid texts.
It was natural, perhaps, that the essentially sensuous beauty of Greek art and architecture should not appeal to the great body of the Crusaders, men whose own national souls were to find expression in the massive dignity of Gothic art. But it was deplorable. The whole artistic development of Western Europe, as well as the history of the world, might have been changed and human progress advanced centuries ahead of time, had the lords of the host perceived the full measure of their opportunity. They did not, and for that they cannot be blamed.