"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?"