Now, you might be thinking that the picture I'm drawing is out of my own head.

Let you not be thinking of it as it is now, a city of shadows and ghosts, with a few scant visitors mooning in the canals.
The Pride of the West she was, the Jewel of the East.

Constantinople was her courtyard.

Greece, Egypt, Abyssinia, Bulgaria, and Muscovy, her ten-acre fields.

The Crusaders on their way to fight the Saracen stopped to plead for her help and generosity.