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Every house in Nikosia possesses a luxuriant garden, and the bazaars are festooned with vines; but the whole place wears, notwithstanding, an air of desolation, ruin, and dirt. Government House is one of the last of the old Turkish residences.

The sandy expanse reaches to the foot of the mountains, which viewed from this direction form an equally barren picture. Behind these mountains the appearance of the landscape is said to be very fruitful; but I did not penetrate into the interior, nor did I go to Nikosia, the capital of the island, distant some twelve miles from Larnaka.

Mutio di Costanzo, Admiral of Cyprus and Vice-Roy of Nikosia, Lord of the city and fortress of Costanza, one of a long line of knights, was a gentleman of honor devoted to the Crown and a loyal friend to the Queen: he held the confidence of the people and deserved it well.

The prisoner stood before her judges, when they led her into the Hall of the Assizes, mercifully swathed from head to foot in the filmy silken veil usually worn by the women of Nikosia; but through the snowy folds which concealed the features, there came the gleam of the fantastic jewelled garb, and the lines of the pose proudly defiant were plainly discernible it could be none other than the young and beautiful and high-born Dama Ecciva de Montferrat.

My Son, the Chamberlain, hath seen in the most revered chronicle of State of this kingdom, the Libro delle Rimembranze, the copy of a letter sent by King Janus to His Holiness, to accredit his Reverence the Archbishop of Nikosia, brother to this same Signor Jean Perez Fabrici the Consiglière, who spoke with us but now as Ambassador to His Holiness: and the manner of this letter leaveth no room for doubt that he wrote as a son of the Church, in all confidence of favor.

John, in their white mantles and eight-pointed crosses of red the new primate of Nikosia, with all the hierarchy of his province of diverse creeds the burghers the nobles of the city they made a welcome that stirred the soul of Caterina and filled it with a hope warm as the presage of the glowing skies. "Viva la Regina La ben-venuta!"

The people thronged from far and near until Famagosta could hold no more; from Nikosia, from Larnaca and Limasol and Kerynea and other cities and districts of Cyprus, came great deputations of burghers, with those peasants from the nearer casals and hamlets whom the invitation of their gracious Sovereign Lady had reached and who were not restrained by the unwillingness of their nobles: for there were still some among the ancient families of the island who looked with disfavor upon Janus and his successors.

What have I to do with your kings? Richard showed him that with one king he had plenty to do, by assaulting Limasol and putting armies to flight in the plains about Nikosia. Shall I sing the battle of the fifty against five thousand; tell how King Richard with precisely half a hundred knights came cantering against the sun and a host, as gay and debonair as to a driving of stags?

Never had an ambassador been received with higher honors in the Court of Nikosia, or with such glad faces by all the attendant circle for was not His Excellency of the Queen's own household? and it had been rare to see such a light of happiness in her beloved eyes.

And so without the city, Stefano Caduna, man of the people, received the most solemn oath of these knights and nobles, envoys of the Queen, bareheaded and on bended knee before him, ere he would consent to unbar the gates of Nikosia to receive Her Majesty's own messengers.