"The king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold. The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays. And twelve lions stood there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps: there was not the like made in any kingdom."

The emperors of the Romans, who claimed to be, in a sense, the successors of the chosen people, and who are often represented in illuminated manuscripts in royal robes as kings of Israel, had carefully restored the throne of Solomon as their seat of high state. The chair itself was of ivory and gold, and the lions which supported the arms of the chair were of silver gilt, as were the smaller lions which acted as supporters on the six steps below it. Such a throne was taken as a pattern throughout the west; and the famous seat of Dagobert in the Louvre is supported by lions in the same way. The throne of Solomon, however, was not a curule chair, but a much more solid and magnificent erection, having a high back adorned with gems and enamel enrichments. Eric gazed in amazement and awe at the splendid hall; but he was presently dragged by his guide to witness the procession that was forming in the court-yard outside the Magnaura itself.

The magistri, the patricians, and the senate in a body, with a crowd of officials of various ranks, awaited the summons to attend the court. A silentiary having given the signal, Eric and Symmachos were able to enter the hall and view the approach of their Majesties. Before they took their seats on the thrones, the imperial crowns, with their long pendants of pearls and gems, were placed on their heads, and the royal mantles were thrown over their state robes. Nicephorus himself sat on the throne of Solomon, Theophano at his left hand, and the two child-Basileis on low stools behind them. Around them were placed the secretaries and notaries to take a report of the words spoken, with the logothete, or finance minister, and the chancellor. In the rear behind the throne stood a crowd of cubiculars, silentiaries, and the lords-in-waiting and gentlemen of the golden banqueting chamber.

When the royal party were all seated and placed, the master of the household gave the signal for the sacramental cheer; and from the choirs behind the curtains and from the crowd at the end of the hall broke forth the ritual chant, "Long, long live our Basileus! Long live our Basilissa! Many--many--happy years give them, O Lord God!" At another signal from the master of the household, the gold-stick-in-waiting introduced the first "curtain"--_i.e._, the magistri, or marshals, who had been stationed in the nearest recess. The magistri advanced to the throne and prostrated themselves before the steps. A second usher introduced the second "curtain"--_i.e._, the patricians, who stood next in rank--and so on, the senators and each successive order in due turn drawing aside the curtain which served to mark their place in the ceremonial.

It was now the turn of the foreign envoys, the first of whom were from the powerful caliph of Cordova, now Hakim II., with whom relations of amity were still maintained. The master of the household again signalled to the gold-stick, who, with great ceremony, introduced the mission, at the head of which was the Emir Ghalib, supported by the learned Ibn Khaldun, the same who had escorted Digenes and his companions in the capital of the Spanish empire. The emir was accompanied on his right hand by the catepano, or master of the ceremonies, on the left by the master of the horse, and was attended by an interpreter and his secretaries. The envoy of the mighty caliph was permitted to make his obeisance in his own way--while the envoys of the rude tribes of the north or the east were required to prostrate themselves at full length before the mystic throne.

As each ambassador advanced and made his salaam, the organs pealed forth a triumphal march, and as he rose from the ground the kettle-drums crashed a sonorous welcome. The chancellor then addressed the ambassador, and inquired of the health of the sovereign or chief whom he represented, and the ceremonial compliments of friendship and congratulation were duly recited. Then the golden lions around the throne were made to utter sounds in imitation of a roar of the beast by an ingenious mechanism, which was nothing but the stop of an organ concealed beneath the floor. To Eric and to the untutored envoys of the north the sounds issuing from the throats of the lions seemed little less than miraculous. To the citizens of Constantinople, with whom the wind-organ and other instruments of the kind were familiar, the mechanical roar of the lions on the throne and the twittering of the golden birds in the canopy above, which was also a favorite device, had ceased to be anything but a useful toy, that amused the groundlings and amazed the barbarians.

The envoy of the caliph was succeeded by a prelate despatched from old Rome by the Pope (or anti-Pope) Leo VIII., who was struggling amid horrors of every sort to dispossess the infamous Octavian claiming to be Pope John XII. Nicephorus, whose detestation of the degraded and servile papacy was boundless, had been persuaded with difficulty to receive the opponent and rival of the ferocious murderer who now desecrated the Latin see. Basil and the astute council of the empire had warned their proud chief not to rebuff the candidate for the chair of St. Peter, who was chosen by the all-powerful Otto I. of Germany and Italy. Nicephorus listened to the hollow congratulations of the Italian prelate in silence, and directed his chancellor to reply to them with the best grace he could assume. The Roman prelate was followed by envoys from Venice, Amalphi, and the dukes of Beneventum and Capua, who still admitted a shadowy bond of vassalage to the successor of Justinian at Byzantium.

The Italian envoys were succeeded by a crowd of deputies from various nations, tribes, and princelets north of the Ister and the Euxine Sea, or such as lay beyond the eastern frontier of the empire. They were first Patzinaks, then Russ; then Chazars, Alans, and "Turks," or Hungarians, as we call them to-day. All were in uncouth and picturesque native costumes, shaggy skins, tall and pointed head-gear, and strange ornaments. They each brought presents of various sorts--embroidered garments, embossed arms, enamelled vases, horses, performing bears, and white boar-hounds, which were paraded in the court outside, then announced with much solemnity, and received with equal curiosity and interest.

The long reception was continued for hours as the envoys were presented from the kings of Armenia proper, the dwellers around Mount Ararat and the plains of Lake Van; from the Abasgians and Georgians of the Caucasus, the Lazi, and the chief of the Iberians, who had been honored with the right to assume the Byzantine title of curopalates. Long before the stream of introductions had ended, with its ever-varying changes of language, costume, and manner, the young Scandinavian had been quite lost in the babel of tongues and the moving panorama before his eyes. The impression had been fully driven into his open mind, which the subtle politicians of Constantinople ever sought to extend--the impression of the world-wide relations of the Roman empire, and its claim to be the centre of power, culture, and Christian civilization. It was the policy embodied by Constantine Born-in-the-Purple in the fifty-three chapters of his work, _The Administration of the Empire_, which he so laboriously--and so uselessly--prepared for the instruction of his feckless son.

There is a pathos to-day as we read the dedication and preface to this work, recalling, as it does, so much profound state policy and such wasted hopes. "_Constantine by grace of Christ the King Everlasting, Emperor of the Romans, these to his only son, Romanus, crowned of God and Born-in-the-Purple, Emperor._" He begins: "A wise son rejoices the heart of his father, and an affectionate father has delight in a thoughtful son. Now, therefore, my son, listen to my words; and if you take to heart these lessons you will be counted as wise among the thoughtful and as thoughtful among the wise. The people will bless thee, and many nations shall call thee fortunate. Take to heart that which it behooves thee to understand, so shalt thou wield the helm of this empire like a wise ruler. And do Thou, O Lord my God, whose heavenly kingdom is indestructible and everlasting, vouchsafe to guide in the right way this son whom I have begotten by Thy grace." Alas! the bright youth, so beloved and so promising, was guided rather in the wrong way by Theophano, by Bringas, by Chærina, and many devils like unto them, into the bottomless pit where he lay the scorn of after ages.

At the very end of the audience a scene of extraordinary violence roused the whole hall to a state of wild excitement. The envoys of the sovereign of Bulgaria, the Czar Peter, had the right, as the Czar was allowed the title of Basileus, to be presented before all other foreign ambassadors. To-day they had been purposely kept to the last, in spite of their remonstrances and indignation. Peter, when nearly forty years before he had succeeded to the throne of his father, the powerful Symeon, had made a treaty of amity with the Byzantine kingdom, and had married a granddaughter of the Emperor Lecapenus, a cousin of Romanus II. By this treaty the Bulgarian sovereign was entitled to receive a yearly subsidy in consideration of his protecting the empire from the incursions of the Magyars on the other side of the Danube. The Bulgarian kingdom now extended from Belgrade to Adrianople, which under Symeon had been a terrible incubus to Constantinople, had become weak and peaceful under Peter, and a docile imitator of the arts and manners of Byzantium. The subsidy was regularly paid; but the Bulgarian monarchy had been little able to restrain the incursions of the Danubian raiders. To all the remonstrances of the empire, they alleged their own weakness. Nicephorus in council had resolved to refuse any further payment; and, indeed, he had secretly decided on a policy which should bring the Bulgarian kingdom to its knees by force of arms.

When at last admitted to the hall of audience, the Bulgarian envoys committed the imprudence of adding to the formal compliments to the new Basileus the exasperating demand for payment of the annual subsidy, which they spoke of as "the tribute they had been sent to claim." Nicephorus, who wanted but a pretext of the kind to justify a rupture with the kingdom, rose from his throne, and in a tone of indignation, which he had no need to feign, for the very word "tribute" had roused him to ungovernable passion, he broke out thus: "Foul shame would it be to us Romans, to us who in arms have driven before us every enemy who has dared to meet us, if we consent to pay 'tribute' as if we were slaves buying their freedom by coin--ay, pay tribute to a horde of Scythians, this miserable and unclean tribe of barbarians."

This extraordinary outburst, so unusual in a man as taciturn and as self-controlled as Nicephorus, electrified the audience; for only the privy-councillors, and but few of them, knew of the emperor's settled purpose to bring on a war with the Czar Peter.

Then the emperor, kindling with his own passion, in a voice of thunder that he never used in public councils, turned to his aged father, Bardas, as if to recall some by-gone incident of the Lecapenian usurpers, and said: "What on earth do these Mœsians mean, my father, by talking about tribute as due to them from Rome?--'tribute,' do they say? What, sir, am I not your own true-born son? Am I, the august emperor of the Romans, to be a tributary--the tributary, forsooth--of a pitiful and ungodly tribe?"

The audience held their breath in awe. The Bulgarian envoys cowered.

"Here!" roared Nicephorus. "Ushers, bring your rods and drive these fellows from our presence!"

Nicephorus was now choking with rage, and attempted no longer to restrain himself.

"Be off with you!" he cried, hoarsely. "Go tell your master, whose food is the leather and whose garments are the hides of his own cattle, they say--go back and tell him that the mighty and irresistible Basileus of the Romans is now about to march from his own country into his, and he will himself bring the tribute that is demanded of him--tribute that your people will little care to have. Now learn, slaves as you are, with slaves for your fathers and your grandsires--learn to address the sovereign of the Romans as your lord and master, and never dare in this palace to talk to him about tribute, as if he were a caitiff and a serf."

The emperor closed the audience, and the hall was forthwith emptied. Excited groups gathered outside to discuss the meaning of it all. No one was more amazed than Eric, and meeting the general Bardas Skleros in the throng, he ventured to ask him what it portended.

"It portends," said Bardas, quietly, "that war will be declared against the Bulgarian kingdom this very day. Rome, in her hour of victory, will not suffer those savages to threaten our very existence from the passes of the Hasmus. We will crush this Bulgarian kingdom. The emperor crosses their frontier to-morrow at the head of the advanced army. In ten days we shall reach their so-called capital on the northern side of the mountains. I am to command a brigade, and you shall be on my staff."

So Eric began his service in the long, secular duel between the Bulgarian and Byzantine kingdoms--a duel wherein he himself was destined to play so heroic a part, a duel wherein the child-Basil who had witnessed the rebuff of the envoys of King Peter was destined to earn his title of "Slayer of the Bulgarians."