women had stored up in them. And yet the whole did not nearly suffice.
Nor was that all. This army, which they had driven from before their walls, and which now behaved as if it had been victorious, had to be fed. Where was the money to buy provisions for them? Where were the provisions themselves to come from? For the Latins had settled their camp over the richest and most fertile suburbs of the city, where they plundered and devoured at their will.
The two emperors, father and son, who might at least have maintained the dignity of the Byzantine crown, were ridiculous and degraded in the eyes of the people. For the father, led on by the promises of astrologers and monks, who held out hopes of the recovery of his sight and the gift of a prolonged life, spent his time in entertaining these charlatans and spiritual jugglers; while the son, probably glad to escape the mortifications of the impoverished court, was always in the Crusaders' camp, feasting, gambling, singing, and drinking with the rough young knights, who treated him with no more courtesy than they showed to each other.
The situation was intolerable, and it was destined to become worse. Still there was hope. At the end of September the Crusaders would embark again and set sail, leaving Constantinople, it might be hoped, for ever. So, at least, it was arranged. What Dandolo proposed to do if the conditions of the treaty were not fulfilled, no one cared to inquire. The French and Flemish barbarians, the rough and unmannerly Western knights, with no knowledge of Homer and no respect for Byzan-
