In the sudden silence, he glared down at the silent cluster of terrified widows.
"Borla!!" pronounced Emperor Euphrates, grating out his Chief Advisor's name.
"Hmm?" said Borla, somewhat jittery at the rank savagery of his Emperor's expression. But he was nothing, if not competent, and showed no further sign of his nervousness as he quickly recovered himself and fell smoothly into the litany of his accustomed royal pronouncements.
Borla turned to face the audience, and cleared his throat loudly.
"Ahem! His Majesty the Emperor Euphrates, is off-ended," said Borla as he turned significantly to Ampho, the Royal Crier.
"Eh? What was that?" asked the latter, starting upright as if he had been lost in a daze.
Ampho, the Royal Crier, beaked of nose and as thin as a reed, blinked in a rapid fluttering of his rheumy, myopic eyes as if he were suddenly roused out of a deep trance, and perked up his ears anew as he finally managed to take his eyes off the quacking old crone. He raised his bushy eyebrows and turned his hoary-haired and white-bearded countenance in an aside to Borla as he raised his bushy eyebrows alertly.
"Say again?" repeated Ampho.
The Royal Crier's occasional impudence was tolerated by Borla because he always managed to put on quite a show, and also because the Emperor Euphrates was so fond of the old ditherer, who was endeared to his majesty by virtue of having been old and gray-haired at such a time as his Imperial Majesty was still playing naked in the royal mud.
Betraying ill-concealed impatience, Borla repeated himself.