edge of my innocence." The archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and
the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards and
new services. II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of
Nice, he was secretly informed, that the mind of the absent prince was
poisoned with jealousy; and that death, or blindness, would be his final
reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of Theodore, the
constable, with some followers, escaped from the city and the empire;
and though he was plundered by the Turkmans of the desert, he found a
hospitable refuge in the court of the sultan. In the ambiguous state
of an exile, Michael reconciled the duties of gratitude and loyalty:
drawing his sword against the Tartars; admonishing the garrisons of the
Roman limit; and promoting, by his influence, the restoration of peace,
in which his pardon and recall were honorably included. III. While
he guarded the West against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again
suspected and condemned in the palace; and such was his loyalty or
weakness, that he submitted to be led in chains above six hundred miles
from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of the messenger alleviated his
disgrace; the emperor's sickness dispelled his danger; and the
last breath of Theodore, which recommended his infant son, at once
acknowledged the innocence and the power of Palaeologus.

[Footnote 11: The pedigree of Palaeologus is explained by Ducange,
(Famil. Byzant. p. 230, &c.:) the events of his private life are related
by Pachymer (l. i. c. 7--12) and Gregoras (l. ii. 8, l. iii. 2, 4, l.
iv. 1) with visible favor to the father of the reigning dynasty.]

[Footnote 12: Acropolita (c. 50) relates the circumstances of this
curious adventure, which seem to have escaped the more recent writers.]

[Footnote 13: Pachymer, (l. i. c. 12,) who speaks with proper contempt
of this barbarous trial, affirms, that he had seen in his youth many
person who had sustained, without injury, the fiery ordeal. As a Greek,
he is credulous; but the ingenuity of the Greeks might furnish some
remedies of art or fraud against their own superstition, or that of
their tyrant.]

But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power was too
strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair field that was
opened to his ambition. [14] In the council, after the death of Theodore,
he was the first to pronounce, and the first to violate, the oath of
allegiance to Muza