They have no child of their own. There is a great future before you,
Leon. When it comes, do not forget the poor brethren of Saint
Nicephorus, who took you in when you had no friend in the world."

The old abbot spoke cheerily, but it was easy to see from his anxious
countenance that the nearer he came to the capital the more doubtful did
his errand appear. What had seemed easy and natural from the quiet
cloisters of Antioch became dubious and dark now that the golden domes
of Constantinople glittered so close at hand. Ten years before, a
wretched woman, whose very name was an offence throughout the eastern
world where she was as infamous for her dishonour as famous for her
beauty, had come to the monastery gate, and had persuaded the monks to
take charge of her infant son, the child of her shame. There he had
been ever since. But she, Theodora, the harlot, returning to the
capital, had by the strangest turn of Fortune's wheel caught the fancy
and finally the enduring love of Justinian the heir to the throne.
Then on the death of his uncle Justin, the young man had become the
greatest monarch upon the earth, and had raised Theodora to be not only
his wife and Empress, but to be absolute ruler with powers equal to and
independent of his own. And she, the polluted one, had risen to the
dignity, had cut herself sternly away from all that related to her past
life, and had shown signs already of being a great Queen, stronger and
wiser than her husband, but fierce, vindictive, and unbending, a firm
support to her friends, but a terror to her foes. This was the woman to
whom the Abbot Luke of Antioch was bringing Leon, her forgotten son.
If ever her mind strayed back to the days when, abandoned by her lover
Ecebolus, the Governor of the African Pentapolis, she had made her way
on foot through Asia Minor, and left her infant with the monks, it was
only to persuade herself that the brethren cloistered far from the world
would never identify Theodora the Empress with Theodora the dissolute