tains to the care of the Roman pope, let the lord pope send to Nicephorus an epistle altogether like to those sepulchres which without are whited, within are full of dead men's bones; within let him show to him how through perjury and adultery he has obtained the rule over his masters; let him invite Nicephorus to a synod, and, if he do not come, let him hurl the anathema at him. But if the address be not as I have said, it will never reach him.
But to return to the matter in hand. When the princes I have mentioned heard from me the aforesaid promise concerning the address, not suspecting any guile: "We thank thee," they said, "oh bishop. It is worthy of thy wisdom to act as mediator in so great a matter. Thou art the only one of the Franks whom we now love ; but when at thy behest they shall have corrected what is evil, they also shall be loved. And when thou shalt come to us again thou shalt not go away unrewarded."
I said to myself: "If I ever come back here again, may Nicephorus present me with a crown and a golden sceptre !"
"But tell us," they continued, "does thy most holy master wish to close with the emperor a treaty of friend- ship through marriage?"
"When I came hither he wished it," I said, "but since, during my long delay, he has received no news; he thinks that you have committed a crime, and that I have been taken and bound; and his whole soul, like that of a lioness bereft of her whelps, is inflamed with a desire through just wrath to take vengeance, and to renounce the marriage and to pour out his anger upon you."
"If he attempts it," they said, "we will not say Italy, but not even the poor Saxony where he was born — where the inhabitants wear the skins of wild beasts — will protect him. With our money, which gives us our power, we will arouse all the nations against him; and we will break him in pieces like a potter's vessel, which, when broken can not be brought into shape again. And as we imagine that thou, in his honour, hast bought some costly garments, we order thee to bring them before us. What are fit for thee shall be marked with a leaden seal and left to thee ; but those which are prohibited to all nations except to us Romans, shall be taken away and the price returned."
