Morsinia was at first as much dazed by the splendor, as she was mortified by her ignorance of the formalities, with which she was received. But the natural dignity of her bearing stood her in good stead of more courtly graces: for these modern Greeks emulated those of ancient times in the reverence they paid to womanly beauty. The chamberlain was somewhat past middle life. He was a man whose studious habits, as the great historian of his times, did not dull his brilliancy as the master of etiquette. Nor had his astuteness as a statesman been acquired by any sacrifice of his taste for social intrigues. The diversions from the cares of state, which other great men have found at the gaming-table or in their cups, Phranza sought in studying the mysteries of female character; admiring its virtues, and yet not averse to finding entertainment in its foibles. A true Greek, he believed that physical beauty was the index of the rarer qualities of mind and heart. He would have been a consenting judge at the trial of that beautiful woman in the classic story, the perfection of whose unrobed form disproved the charge of her crime. He was such an ardent advocate of the absolute authority of the emperor that, though of decided aristocratic tendencies, he held that no marriage alliance, however high the rank of the bride, could add to the dignity of the throne: indeed, that beauty alone could grace the couch of a king; that the first of men should wed the fairest of women, and thus combine the aristocracy of rank with the aristocracy of nature. He had frequent opportunities to express his peculiar views on this subject; for, among the problems which then perplexed his statecraft, was that of the marriage of the emperor—that the succession might not be left to the hazard of strife among the families of the blood of the Palæologi. Had the choice of the royal spouse been left entirely in his hands, he would have made the selection on no other principle than that adopted by the purveyor of plumage for the court, who seeks the rarest colors without regard to the nesting-place of the bird.
The genuine politeness of the courtier, together with Morsinia's womanly tact in adapting herself to her new environment, soon relieved her from the feeling of restraint, and the hours of the voyage passed pleasantly. Her conversation, which was free from the conventionalities of the day, was, for this very reason, as refreshing to Phranza as the simple forms of nature—the mountain stream, the tangles of vines and wild flowers—are to the habitués of cities. There was a native poetry in her diction, an artlessness in her questions, and a transparent honesty in her responses. Indeed, her very manner unveiled the features of so exalted and healthy a mind, of a disposition so frank and ingenuous, of a character so delicately pure and exquisitely beautiful, that they compensated many fold any lack of artificial culture. The great critic of woman forgot to study her face: he only gazed upon it. He ceased to analyze her character: he simply felt her worth.
But no fairness of a maiden, be she Albanian or Greek, can long monopolize the attention of an elderly man whose swift vessel bears him through the clustering glories of the Ægean. Nor could any awe for his rank, or interest in his learned conversation, absorb Morsinia from these splendors which glowed around her. They gazed in silence upon the smooth and scarcely bending sea, which, like a celestial mirror, reflected all the hues of the sky—steely blue dissolving into softest purple; white mists transfused by sunset's glow into billows of fire; monolithic islands flashing with the colors of mighty agates in the prismatic air; clouds white as snow and clear cut as diamonds, lifting themselves from the horizon like the "great white throne" that St. John saw from the cliffs of Patmos yonder.
Crossing the Ægean, the voyagers hugged the old Trojan coast until off the straits of the Hellespont. They lay during a day under the lee of Yeni Sheyr shoals, and at night ran the gauntlet of the new Turkish forts, Khanak-Kalesi and Khalid-Bahar, at the entrance to the Sea of Marmora. Two days later there broke upon the view that most queenly of cities, Byzantium, reclining upon the tufted couch of her seven hills, by the most lovely of seas, like a nymph beside her favorite fountain. The galley glided swiftly by the "Seven Towers," which guard on Marmora the southern end of the enormous triple wall. The bastions and towers of this famous line of defenses cut their bold profile against the sky for a distance of five or six miles in a straight line, until the wall met the extremity of the Golden Horn on the north; thus making the city in shape like a triangle—the base of gigantic masonry; the sides of protecting seas.
Gay barges and kaiks shot out from the shore to form a welcoming pageant to the returning chamberlain. With easy oars they drifted almost in the shadows of the cypress trees which lined the bank and hid the residences of wealthy Greek merchants and the pavilions of princes. The lofty dome of St. Sophia flashed its benediction upon the travelers, and its challenge of a better faith far across the Bosphorus to the Asiatic Moslem, whose minarets gleamed like spear-heads from beside their mosques. From the point where the Golden Horn meets the strait of the Bosphorus and the sea of Marmora, rose the palace of the emperor, embowered in trees, and surrounded with gardens which loaded the air with the perfume of rarest flowers and the song of birds. Rounding the point into the Golden Horn, the grim old Genoese tower of Galata, on the opposite bank, saluted them with its drooping banner. They dropped anchor in the lovely harbor. Strong arms with a few strokes sent the tipsy kaiks from the galley through the rippling water to the landing. An elegant palanquin brought the wife of Phranza to meet her lord. Another, which was designed for the chamberlain, he courteously assigned to Morsinia; while Constantine and the gentlemen of the suite mounted the gaily caparisoned horses that were in readiness. The chamberlain insisted upon Morsinia and Constantine becoming his guests, at least until their familiarity with the city should make it convenient for them to reside elsewhere.
CHAPTER XXX.
The house of Phranza was rather a series of houses built about a square court, in which were parterres of rarest plants, divided from each other by walks of variegated marble, and moistened by the spray of fountains.
Morsinia's palanquin was let down just within the gateway. A young woman assisted her to alight, and conducted her to apartments elegantly furnished with all that could please a woman's eye, though she were the reigning beauty of a court, instead of one brought up as a peasant in a distant province, and largely ignorant of the arts of the toilet. She was bewildered with the strangeness of her surroundings, and sat down speechless upon the cushion to gaze about her. Was she herself? It required the remembrance that Constantine was somewhere near her to enable her to realize her own identity, and that she had not been changed by some fairy's wand into a real princess.