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YET other opportunities of improvement lay within the emperor's
reach, for his wife used constantly to put him in mind of the divine
laws in which she had first carefully educated herself. In no way
exalted by her imperial rank she was rather fired by it with greater
longing for divine things. The greatness of the good gift given her
made her love for Him who gave it all the greater, so she bestowed
every kind of attention on the maimed and the mutilated, declining all
aid from her household and her guards, herself visiting the houses
where the sufferers lodged, and providing every one with what he
required. She also went about the guest chambers of the churches and
ministered to the wants of the sick, herself handling pots and pans,
and tasting broth, now bringing in a dish and breaking bread and
offering morsels, and washing out a cup and going through all the other
duties which are supposed to be proper to servants and maids. To them
who strove to restrain her from doing these things with her own hands
she would say, "It befits a sovereign to distribute gold; I, for
the sovereign power that has been given me, am giving my own service to
the Giver." To her husband, too, she was ever wont to say,
"Husband, you ought always to bethink you what you were once and what
you have become now; by keeping this constantly in mind you will never
grow ungrateful to your benefactor, but will guide in accordance with
law the empire bestowed upon you, and thus you will worship Him who
gave it." By ever using language of this kind, she with fair and
wholesome care, as it were, watered the seeds of virtue planted in her
husband's heart.
She died before her husband, and not long after the time of her death
events occurred which showed how well her husband loved her.
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