"My dear sons in Christ, I, your bishop and spiritual father, recommend to you coolness and good will. A truce with unseasonable jokes!" "Count," said Chram to Neroweg flippantly, "mistrust this profligate and hypocritical bishop. Do not bestow upon him alone the privilege of singing your wife's praises--holy man though he be, he would as leave sing the praises of Venus, the goddess of the pagans!" "Chram, I am the servant of the son of our glorious King Clotaire; but as bishop I am entitled to your respect." "You are right; nowadays you bishops have become almost as powerful, and above all as rich as ourselves, the Kings." "Chram, you mention the power and the wealth of the bishops of Gaul. You seem to forget that our power is of the Lord, and our riches are the goods of the poor!" "By the slack skin of all the purses that you have rifled, you fat weasel who suck the yellow of the eggs and leave only the shell to the sots, for once you have told the truth. Aye, your riches are the goods of the poor, but you have bagged these goods for yourself." "Glorious Prince, I have accompanied you to the burg of my son in Christ, Count Neroweg, in order to fulfill the act of high justice that you know of, but not in order to allow our holy Catholic and apostolic religion to be impudently made sport of in my person!" "And I maintain that your power and riches increase by the day. I have two daughters; who knows but they will yet see the royal power shrink in even measure as the grasping usurpations of the bishops, with whom we shared our conquest, gain ground--a parcel of bishops whom we enriched, to whom we have been the men at arms, and who are ungrateful towards their benefactors!" "Men at arms to us, men of peace? You err, O, Prince! Our only arms are sermons and exhortations." "And when the people laugh at your sermons, as the Visigoths did, the Arians of Provence and Languedoc, then you send us to extirpate their heresy with fire and sword! Those are your real arms!" "Glory to God! In those wars against the heretics, the Frankish Kings took an immense booty, they caused the orthodox faith to triumph, and snatched the souls of men from the everlasting flames by leading them back to the bosom of the holy Church."