Then I let go the Emperor’s hand and . . . to the Empress … I again applied [my hand] to his wrist … asphyxia. She often signed to me as she wanted me to tell her the state of his pulse. But when . . . I touched it again and I recognized that all his strength was giving way and that the pulse in the arteries had finally stopped, then I bowed my head and, exhausted and fainting I looked down to the ground, said nothing, but clasped my hands over my face and stepped back and wept.
The disaster which overtook the whole world
The Empress understood what that meant and in absolute despair uttered a sudden loud, far-reaching shriek. How can I possibly picture the disaster which overtook the whole world? or how deplore my own condition? the Empress took off her royal veil and caught hold of a knife and cut off all her hair close to the skin and threw off the red shoes from her feet and demanded ordinary black sandals. And when she wanted to change her purple dress for a black garment, no dress could be found at hand, But the third of my sisters had garments suitable for the time and occasion, as she had already experienced the ills of widowhood, so the Empress took them and dressed herself and put on a plain dark veil on her head. And at this moment the Emperor resigned his holy soul to God, and my sun went down. . . .
Persons who were addicted to emotion sang dirges, beat their breasts and raised their voices to heaven in shrill laments … weeping for their benefactor who had . . . all things to them. But even to this day I am doubtful whether I am alive and writing this and recounting the Emperor’s death, and I put my hands to my eyes and wonder whether the events I am relating now are not a dream, or if not a dream, whether it is not a delusion, and madness on my part, some strange and monstrous fancy.
For, as he has gone, why am I still numbered among the living and . . . or why did I not resign my soul too or expire directly he had expired and die without feeling? or, if that was not to be my fate, why did I not throw myself down from some high and lofty place or cast myself into the waves of the sea? I have recorded my life with its great misfortunes. But, as is said in the tragedy ‘there is no ill or God-sent calamity whose weight I could not bear.’ For verily God has made me the repository of many sorrows. I have lost the shining light of the world, the great Alexius; and verily his soul was master over his suffering body.
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