nted by the enemies of Irene, to charge
her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers
of the West. The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly
been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national
hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege
of ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends and bad
neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a
neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia,
the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of
circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp,
on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound
their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at
least the pride, of the Byzantine palace. The Greeks were successively
led through four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to
fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he
informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of
the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer, were
repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the
chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the
doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the
genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which
he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious
chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two
empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the right
of present possession. But the Greeks soon forgot this humiliating
equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it was
extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully
saluted the _august_ Charlemagne, with the acclamations of _basileus_,
and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in
the person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed,
"To the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and
Lombards." When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis
the Second of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation
of rex or _rega_, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His
reply is expressive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning,
that, both in sacred and profane histor