The Acab Saat rose in a violent passion, he struggled to get loose his hands, that he might be free to use the act of denouncing excommunication, which is by lifting the right hand, and extending the forefinger; finding that impossible, he cried out, Unloose my hands, or you are all excommunicated. It was with difficulty he could be prevailed upon to hear the king, who with great composure, or rather indifference, said to him, You are the first ecclesiastical officer in my household, you are the third in the whole kingdom; but I have not yet learned you ever had power to curse your sovereign, or exhort his subjects to murder him. You are to be tried for this crime by the judges to-morrow, so prepare to shew in your defence, upon what precepts of Christ, or his apostles, or upon what part of the general councils, you found your title to do this. Let my hands be unloosed, cries Salama violently; I am a priest, a servant of God; and they have power, says David, to put kings in chains, and nobles in irons. And did not Samuel hew king Agag to pieces before the Lord? I excommunicate you, Tecla Haimanout. And he was going on, when Tecla Mariam, son of the king's secretary, a young man, struck the Acab Saat so violently on the face, that it made his mouth gush out with blood, saying, at same time, What! suffer this in the king's presence? Upon which both Chremation and the Acab Saat were hurried out of the tent without being suffered to say more; indeed the blow seemed to have so much disconcerted Abba Salama, that it deprived him for a time of the power of speaking. In Abyssinia it is death to strike, or lift the hand to strike, before the king; but in this case the provocation was so great, so sudden, and unexpected, and the youth's worth and the insolence of the offender so apparent to every body, that a slight reproof was ordered to be given to Tecla Mariam (by his father only) but he lost no favour for what he had done, either with the King, Michael, or the people. When the two prisoners were carried before the Ras, he refused to see them, but loaded them with irons, and committed them to close custody. That night a council was held in the king's tent, but it broke early up; afterwards another before the Ras, which sat much later; the reason was, that the first, where the king was, only arranged the business of to-morrow, while that before the Ras considered all that was to be done or likely to happen at any time.