The Sun Priest, trembling with anger, strove to protest, but she commanded:
"Silence, priest! By me. only do you rule the people. At a word from me to the people well, you know. It is not any easy way to die."
She turned to the three men, saying:
"And who will marry me?"
They looked embarrassment and consternation at one another, but none spoke.
"I am a woman," the Queen went on teasingly. "And therefore am I not desirable to men? Is it that I am not young? Is it, as women go, that I am not beautiful? Is it that men's tastes are so strange that no man cares to clasp the sweet of me in his arms and press his lips on mine as good Francis there did on my hand?"
She turned her eyes on Leoncia.
You be judge. You are a woman well loved of men.
Am I not such a woman as you, and shall I not be loved?"
You will ever be kinder to men than to women, " Leoncia answered cryptically as regarded the three men who heard, but clearly to the woman's brain of the Queen. "And as a woman," Leoncia continued, "you are strangely beautiful and luring; and there are men in this world, many men, who could be made mad to clasp you in their arms. But I warn you, Queen, that in this world are men, and men, and men."