her choice. The marriage was at once celebrated, and the professor's daughter, under the name of Eudocia, which she had received at her baptism, became the empress of the East.
The rest of her story is somewhat sad. For several years she was content to live in submission to the wishes of Pulcheria, and to take little or no part in public affairs. After twenty years, when she was not far from fifty, she was the subject of a strange scandal; but it is fair to say that our accounts of the matter are obscure, and the incident we are about to mention is regarded by Gibbon as one which might have found a fitting place in the "Arabian Nights." We may well suppose, at any rate, that it has been exaggerated or distorted by the gossip of the court. The story goes that as the emperor was on his way to church on the Feast of the Epiphany, he was presented by a poor man with a singularly fine apple; that having ordered him to be rewarded on a princely scale, he forthwith sent the apple as a pleasant surprise to the empress, who was, it appears, passionately fond of fruit. The sequel of the tale is certainly very ridiculous. Eudocia, we are told, was too fond of a gouty old man, Paulinus by name, one of the chief officials in the court, and to him she sent the apple. Paulinus, instead of retaining the gift for the sake of the giver, as he ought to have done under the circumstances, took the poor man's view of the matter, and thought the emperor the only person worthy of such a splendid present. The result was that Theodosius on his return from church found his apple awaiting him, and thinking
