#baudolino

Me: whatever i don't feel anything

*1 hour later*

Me: dude i swear prestor John wrote that letter

Eugène Delacroix, The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1840)

Niketas did not bend to kiss the feet of his savior. He was already on the ground, and too distraught to behave with the dignity his rank required. “O my good lord, thank you for your aid. This means that not all Latins are wild beasts with faces distorted by hatred! Not even the Saracens acted this way when they reconquered Jerusalem, when Saladin was content with a handful of coins to guarantee the safety of the inhabitants. How shameful for all Christendom, brothers against armed brothers, pilgrims who were to recover the Holy Sepulcher but have allowed themselves to be halted by greed and envy, and are destroying the Roman empire! O Constantinople, Constantinople! Mother of churches, princess of religion, guide of perfect opinions, nurse of all learning, now you have drunk from the hand of God the cup of fury, and burned in a fire far greater than that which burned the Pentapolis! What envious and implacable demons have poured down on you the intemperance of their intoxication, what mad and odious Suitors have lighted your nuptial torch? O mother, once clad in gold and imperial purple, now befouled and haggard. And robbed of your children, like birds imprisoned in a cage, we cannot find the way to leave this city that was ours, nor the strength to remain here, but instead, sealed within many errors, we roam like vagrant stars!”

“Master Niketas,” Baudolino said, “I have been told that you Greeks talk too much and about everything, but I didn’t believe it went this far. At the moment, the question is how to move our ass out of here.”

— Umberto Eco, Baudolino (2000)