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CHAPTER VII A CITY OF THE CRUSADERS AT night I took to bed with me a number of books about Cyprus, and tried, till my candles burnt down into their sockets, to put together some cohe-rent history of Nicosia. To begin, I gathered that it was a town of immense antiquity ; that it was certainly wealthy and populous before the days of Constantine ; that it was then adorned with palaces and beautiful Greek temples ; and that gradually side by side with the white Corinthian porticoes rose a splendid crowd of Christian churches and monas-teries. When the English crusaders came in their grey armour and seized it, it looked like a vision to their rude European eyes. This happened about 1190. A few years later, under circumstances which I afterwards studied more attentively, and which read exactly like a chapter out of the Waverley novels, it, and Cyprus with it, were handed over to Guy de Lusignan, ex-king of Jerusalem. This Guy, who when he began life was nothing

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