passed their lives in his confidence. In his last hours, when he was
pressed by his wife Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head,
and breathed a pious ejaculation on the vanity of the world. The
indignant reply of the Empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his
tomb,--'You die, as you have lived--a hypocrite.'

"It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her sons in favour
of her daughter, the Princess Anna, whose philosophy would not have
refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of male succession was
asserted by the friends of their country; the lawful heir drew the
royal signet from the finger of his insensible or conscious father, and
the empire obeyed the master of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated
by ambition and revenge to conspire against the life of her brother;
and when the design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her
husband, she passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two
sexes, and had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. After the
discovery of her treason, the life and fortune of Anna were justly
forfeited to the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the
Emperor, but he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and
bestowed the rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends."--
_History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap.
xlviii.

The year of Anna's death is nowhere recorded. She appears to have
written the _Alexiad_ in a convent; and to have spent nearly
thirty years in this retirement, before her book was published.

For accurate particulars of the public events touched on in _Robert
of Paris,_ the reader is referred to the above quoted author,
chapters xlviii. xlix. and l.; and to the first volume of Mills'