tween the grandfather and the grandson refused to be healed.
His efforts to bring that disgraceful and disastrous quarrel to an end
involved great self-sacrifice and wrecked his career. For the counsels
he addressed to Andronicus III. gave mortal offence, and when the young
emperor entered the capital and took up his quarters in the palace of
the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfour Serai), his troops sacked and demolished
Theodore's mansion in that vicinity. The beautiful marbles which adorned
the residence were sent as an imperial present to a Scythian prince,
while the fallen statesman was banished to Didymotica for two years.
Upon his return from exile Theodore found a shelter in the monastery
which he had restored in his prosperous days. But there also, for some
two years longer, the cup of sorrow was pressed to his lips. A malady
from which he suffered caused him excruciating pain; his sons were
implicated in a political plot and thrown into prison; Andronicus II.,
between whom and himself all communication had been forbidden, died; and
so the worn-out man assumed the habit of a monk, and lay down to die on
the 13th of March 1331, a month after his imperial friend. His one
consolation was the beautiful church he bequeathed to succeeding
generations for the worship of God.

To the renovation of the church Theodore Metochites devoted himself
heart and soul, and spent money for that object on a lavish scale. As
the central portion of the building was comparatively well
preserved,[529] it was to the outer part of the edifice that he
directed his chief attention--the two narthexes and the parecclesion.
These were to a large extent rebuilt and decorated with the marbles and
mosaics, which after six centuries, and notwithstanding the neglect and
injuries they have suffered during the greater part of that period,
still excite the admiration they awakened when fresh from the artist's
hand.

The connection of Theodore Metochites with this splendid work is
immortalised not only by historians of his day and by himself,[530] but
also by the mosaic which surmounts the main entrance to the church from
the inner narthex. There the restorer of the building, arrayed in his
official robes, and on bended knees, holds a model of the church in his
hands and offers it to the Saviour seated on a throne. Beside the
kneeling figure is the legend, [Greek: ho ktetor logothetes tou gennikou
Theodoros ho Metochites], 'The builder, Logothetes of the Treas