The two slaves hastened to obey the Queen. They rose. To the end of enhancing the value of his merchandise, the Jew had clad the two young girls in short-sleeved tunics, the skirt of which hardly reached their knees, while the cut of their corsage left their bosoms and shoulders half exposed. One of the two slaves, a tall and lithesome girl, wore a white tunic; her eyes were blue; a strand of corals wound itself in the braids of her black hair; eighteen or twenty years was the utmost age that she could be taken for. The girl's face, touchingly beautiful and open, was bathed in tears. Steeped in sorrow and shame, and trembling at every limb, she dared not raise her tear-dimmed eyes out of fear to encounter Brunhild's. After long and attentively contemplating the girl, whom she ordered to turn around in order to have a view of her from all sides, the old Queen exchanged a look of approval with Chrotechilde, who had been no less attentively examining the slave. Addressing the latter she asked: "Of what country are you?" "I am from the city of Toul," answered the girl in a tremulous voice. "Aurelie! Aurelie!" cried Samuel stamping on the ground with his foot. "Is that the way you remember my lessons? You should answer: 'Glorious Queen, I am from the city of Toul.'" And turning towards Brunhild, "Kindly pardon her, madam, but she is so childish, so simple--" Brunhild cut off the Jew's flow of words and proceeded with her interrogatory: "Where were you taken?" "At Toul, madam, when the city was sacked by the King of Burgundy." "Were you free or slave?" "I was free--my father was a master armorer." "Can you read and write? Have you pleasing accomplishments? Can you sing and play?" "I can read and write, and my mother taught me to play upon the archlute and to sing." When she said that she could sing, the unhappy girl was unable to repress the sobs that suffocated her. She must have thought of her mother. "Weep, and weep again!" Samuel cried, angrily scolding the girl. "You can do that better than anything else. But, as you know, great Queen, one has a certain supply of tears, after the supply has run out the bag is empty." "Do you really believe so, Jew? Fortunately you are merely slandering the human race," observed the Queen with a cruel smile, and proceeded to interrogate the young girl: "Have you ever been a slave before now?" "By the faith of Samuel, illustrious Queen, she is as new to slavery as a child in the womb of its mother!" cried the Jew as he saw the young Gallic slave breaking out anew into sobs, and unable to make answer. "I bought Aurelie on the very day of the battle of Toul, and since then my wife Rebecca and I have watched over the girl as if she were our own child, hoping that we might realize a fair price for her. We guarantee that she is a maiden." After another look over the girl, who now hid her face in her hands, Brunhild said to Samuel: