r, pointed to the
couch--we stepped forward--the Empress was dead! Galatea, not less
startled than we, fell into convulsions. Meanwhile, we searched the
room, and found, upon a golden tripod, the ashes of numerous rolls of
parchment. Anicius called for slaves and lights. By this time Galatea
had recovered, and, wringing her hands, told how the Empress had left
her rooms towards evening--about the time of our audience--without
attendants, in order to visit the Emperor, as she frequently did at
that hour. She had returned almost immediately, very quiet, but
strikingly pale. She had ordered the tripod to be filled with glowing
coals, and had then locked herself up in her room. When Galatea knocked
some time later, she had answered that she had gone to rest, and
required nothing more. On hearing this, the Emperor threw himself again
upon the beloved corpse; and now, by the light of the lamps which had
been brought, he saw that the little ruby capsule, containing poison,
in the ring which had once belonged to Cleopatra, and which Theodora
wore upon her little finger, had been opened--the Empress had killed
herself! Upon the lemonwood table lay a strip of parchment, upon which
was written her favourite motto: 'To live is to rule by means of
beauty.' We were still in doubt whether it was the tortures of her
malady or the discovery of her threatened fall which had driven her to
this desperate deed. But our doubts were soon solved. When the news of
Theodora's death spread through the palace, Theophilos, the Emperor's
door-keeper, hurried, half desperate, into the chamber of death, threw
himself at the Emperor's feet, and confessed that he guessed the
connection. He had been for years in the secret service of the Empress,
and every time that the Emperor held an audience to which he had given
orders that the Empress was not to be admitted, he (the doorkeeper) had
apprised the latter of it. She had then almost always heard the most
secret councils of the Emperor from a hiding-place in the doorway of an
adjacent chamber. Thus yesterday he had, as usual, informed the Empress
that we were to have an audience, to which he had been particularly
ordered not to admit her. Presently she had entered her hiding-place,
but she had scarcely heard a few words spoken by Antonina and Anicius,
when, with a smothered cry, she had sank half fainting behind the
curtains; but, quickly rising, she had made a sign to him to keep
silence, and then disappe