Then I rose, and went to the chapel of the prison, or, rather, to a place whence I could see those in the chapel without being seen.

This chapel was situated in a gloomy crypt, lighted only with oil lamps that hung from the massive pillars and arches.

The day was the Sabbath of the Christians, and when I entered the little secret hollow in the walls, the sacrament was being administered to certain of the prisoners.
Truly it was a sad sight, for the ministering priest was none other than the Caesar Nicephorus, the eldest of the Emperor's uncles, who had been first ordained in order that he might be unfit to sit upon the throne, and afterwards blinded, as I have told.

He was a tall, pale man, with an uncertain mouth and a little pointed chin, apparently between forty and fifty years of age, and his face was made dreadful by two red hollows where the eyes should have been.

Yet, notwithstanding this disfigurement, and his tonsured crown, and the broidered priest's robes which hung upon him awkwardly, as he stumbled through the words of his office, to this poor victim there still seemed to cling some air of royal birth and bearing.