has deserted his see,
after publishing this shameful thing." And he held aloft the crumpled
interdict. "As I am a God-fearing, Christian knight, I will not live
under this ban. Since the bishop who excommunicated me is gone, you will
at once elect another in his place who shall absolve me."

They stood before him, silent and impassive, in their priestly dignity,
and in their assurance that the law was on their side.

"Well?" the boy growled at them.

"Habemus episcopum," droned a voice again.

"Amen," boomed in chorus through the cloisters.

"I tell you that your bishop is gone," he insisted, his voice quivering
now with anger, "and I tell you that he shall not return, that he shall
never set foot again within my city of Coimbra. Proceed you therefore at
once to the election of his successor."

"Lord," he was answered coldly by one of them, "no such election is
possible or lawful."

"Do you dare stand before my face, and tell me this?" he roared,
infuriated by their cold resistance. He flung out an arm in a gesture
of terrible dismissal. "Out of my sight, you proud and evil men! Back to
your cells, to await my pleasure. Since in your arrogant, stiff-necked
pride you refuse to do my will, you shall receive the bishop I shall
myself select."

He was so terrific in his rage that they dared not tell him that he had
no power, prince though he might be, to make such an election, bowed to
him, ever impassively, and with their hands still folded, unhurried as
they had come, they now turned and filed past him in departure.

He watched them with scowling brows and tightened lips, Moniz and Nunes
silent behind him. Suddenly those dark, watchful eyes of his were held
by the last figure of all in that austere procession--a tall, gaunt
young man, whose copper-coloured skin and hawk-featured face proclaimed
his Moorish blood. Instantly, maliciously, it flashed through the
prince's boyish mind how he might make of this man an instrument to
humble the pride of that insolent clergy. He raised his hand, and
beckoned the cleric to him.

"What is your name?" he asked him.

"I am called Zuleyman, lord," he was answered, and the name
confirmed--where, indeed, no confirmation was necessary--the fellow's
Moorish origin.

Affonso Henriques laughed. It would be an excellent jest to thrust upon
these arrogant priests, who refused to appoint a bishop of their choice,
a bishop who was little better than a blackamoor.

"Don Zuleyman,