ay some day cause your stock to expiate the original
iniquity of the royal sway that you hold from conquest."

Whether, absorbed in his own thoughts, the Emperor failed to hear the
last words of the Gaul, or whether he could make no answer to them, he
suddenly cried out:

"Let us forget the accursed Northmans. Speak to me of the good that I
have done. Your words of praise are rare; I like them all the more for
that."

"You are not cruel out of wilfulness, although you might be reproached
for the massacre of more than four thousand Saxon prisoners."

"I remember the event perfectly," Charles said with emphasis. "I had to
terrify those barbarians by a signal example. It was a fatal
necessity!"

"Your heart is accessible to certain promptings of justice and humanity.
In your capitularies you made an effort to improve the condition of the
slaves and the colonists."

"It was my duty as a Christian, as a Catholic. All men are brothers."

"You are no more Christian than your friends, the bishops. You have
simply yielded to an instinct of humanity, natural to man, whatever his
religion may be. But still you are not a Christian."

"By the King of the Heavens! Perhaps I am a Jew?"

"Christ said, according to St. Luke the Evangelist: _The Lord hath sent
me to preach deliverance to the captives--to set at liberty them that
are bruised._ Now, then, your dominions are full of prisoners carried by
conquest from their own homes; the estates of your bishops and your
abbots are stocked with slaves. Accordingly, neither you nor your
priests are Christians. A Christian, according to the words of the
Christ, must never hold his fellowman in bondage. All men are equal."

"Custom so wills it; I merely conform myself thereto."

"What is there to hinder you, and the bishops as well as you, all-mighty
Emperor that you are, from abolishing the abominable custom? What is
there to hinder you from emancipating the slaves? What is there to
hinder you from restoring to them, along with their liberty, the
possession of the land that they themselves render fruitful with the
sweat of their brow?"

"Old man, from time immemorial there have been slaves, and there ever
will be slaves. What would it avail to be of the conquering race if not
to keep the fruits of conquest? By the King of the Heavens! Do you take
me for a barbarian? Have I not promulgated laws, founded schools,
encouraged letters, arts and sciences? Is there in the whole world a