The chief judge adjusted her spectacles, and as she looked fixedly at the great ladies she asked, "Where is the slave-woman L'ore?"
The old dowager cast a malicious glance at the judge; but there was still the same silence, the same air of defiance of all authority.
All round the open sala, or hall, was collected a ragged rabble of slave women and children, crouching in all sorts of attitudes and all sorts of costumes, but with eyes fixed on the chief judge in startled astonishment and wonder at her calm, unmovable countenance. Superciliousness and apparent contempt prevailed everywhere, yet in the midst of all the consciousness of an austere and august presence was evident; for not one of those slave-women, lowly, untaught, and half clad as they were, but felt that in the heart of that dark, stern woman before them there was as great a respect for the rights of the meanest among them as for those of the queen dowager herself.
The chief judge then read aloud in a clear voice the letter she had received from the king, and, when it was finished, the dowager and her daughter saluted the letter by prostrating themselves three times before it.
Then the judge inquired if the august ladies had aught to say why the slave-woman L'ore should not have been emancipated when she offered to pay the full price of her freedom.
The attention of all was excited to the highest degree; every eye concentrated itself on the queen dowager.
She spoke with difficulty, and answered with some embarrassment, but from head to foot her whole person defied the judge.
"And what if every slave in my service should bring me the price of her freedom?"
All eyes turned again to the judge, seated so calmly there on her little strip of matting; every ear was strained to catch her reply.
"Then, lady, thou wouldst be bound to free every one of them."