General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1907 Original Publisher: Macmillan Subjects: Byzantine Empire Byzantine empire Fiction / Historical Fiction / Literary History / Ancient / Rome History / Medieval History / Europe / Greece Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III When it was quite dark the old woman came back with something hidden under her tattered shawl, and Zoe drew the rotten shutters that barely hung by the hinges and fastened them inside with bits of rain-bleached cord that were knotted through holes in the wood. She also shut the door and put up a wooden bar across it. While she was doing this she could hear Anastasia, the crazy paralytic who lived farther down the lane, singing a sort of mad litany of hunger to herself in the dark. It was the thin nasal voice of a starving lunatic, rising sharply and then dying away in a tuneless wail: – Holy Mother, send us a little food, for we are hungry! Kyrie eleeison! Eleeison! Blessed Michael Archangel, gives us meat, for we starve! Eleeison! 0 blessed Charalambos, for the love of Heaven, a kid roasted on the coals and good bread with it! Eleeison, eleeison! We are hungry! Holy Sergius and Bacchus, Martyrs, have mercy upon us and send us a savoury meal of pottage! Eleeison! Pottage with oil and pepper! Eleeison, eleeison! Holy Peter and Paul and Zacharius, send your angels with fish, and with meat, and with sweet cooked herbs! Eleeison, let us eat and be filled, and sleep! Eleeison! Spread us your heavenly tables, and let us drink of the good water from the heavenly spring! Oh, we are hungry! We are starving! Eleeison! Eleeison! Eleeison! The miserable, crazy voice rose to a piercing scream, that made Zo…
