"Let it be as you wish, Matteo," he answered. "An I do not hold with all that you say, still I know right well that you would do naught which was not worthy and honourable. Only, prithee, take my sword and Beosund as keepsakes of the days we rode together."
"Gladly, Hugh."
That day week, Hugh, with Sir James, Edith, Sir Cedric and Ralph, set sail from the Golden Horn in the galley Good Adventure, Messer Contarini, Master.
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A charter in the possession of the Abbey Church of St. Cuthbert of Crowden, bearing date of All Hallows, A.D. 1204, provides for the celebration of a mass weekly for the salvation of the soul of a Paynim lady, mother of the jongleur, Matteo of Antioch, who perished in mortal sin.
There are still Chesbys in England, and men still find friends loyal and unselfish in adversity—and England is a greater Empire to-day than ever was the Eastern Rome.
EPILOGUE
From its very inception the Fourth Crusade was marred by an evil destiny. Born of the pangs of rivalry betwixt Church and State, its object was distorted by ambition, avarice, politics and misfortune. Dandolo utilised it to lay the foundations of Venetian greatness. No other State or people gained anything from it of permanent value. Instead of heeding the advice of the wise old Doge to encourage commerce and bulwark their Empire with trade, the barons of the conquered realm crushed the inhabitants under the iron heel of feudalism. Within a year of his election the Emperor Baldwin was dead, slain by the Bulgarians who had burst the frontiers his knights were too weak to defend. Dandolo died not long afterward, exhausted by the marvellous exertions he had undertaken.
Had Western Europe backed the new Empire, had the Papacy lent it ungrudging support, Baldwin's successors might have triumphed, despite their mistaken policies. But the West remained occupied with its own affairs. The religious fervour which had conceived the Crusades was fast expiring. Rulers and peoples were engaged in beating out the groundwork of civilisation from the brutishness of the Middle Ages. There was a dying flicker of fanaticism under the lash of St. Louis's personality a half-century later, but like others which preceded and followed this, it gained no material purpose, it did not better the lot of the Eastern Christians or redeem the dwindling territory of the Holy Land that yet remained in Christian hands.