"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?" "Old man, from time immemorial there have been slaves, and there ever will be slaves. What would it avail to be of the conquering race if not to keep the fruits of conquest? By the King of the Heavens! Do you take me for a barbarian? Have I not promulgated laws, founded schools, encouraged letters, arts and sciences? Is there in the whole world a city comparable with Aix-la-Chapelle?" "Your gorgeous capital of Aix-la-Chapelle, the capital of your Germanic possessions, is not Gaul. Gaul has remained to you a strange country. You love forests that lend themselves to your autumn hunting parties, and the rich domains, whence every year the revenues are carted to your residences on the other side of the Rhine. But you do not love Gaul, seeing that you exhaust her resources in men and money in order to carry on your wars. Frightful misery desolates our provinces. Millions of God's creatures, deprived almost of bread, shelter and clothes, toil from dawn to dusk, and die in slavery--all in order to sustain the opulence of their masters. If you cause instruction to be given to some pupils in your Palatine school, you allow, on the other hand, millions of God's creatures to live like brutes! Such is the condition of Gaul under your reign, Charles the Great!" "Old man," rejoined the Emperor, with a somber face and rising anger, "after treating you as a friend this whole day, I looked for different language. You are more than severe, you are unjust." "I have been sincere towards you, the same as I was towards your grandfather."