Your princess stands before you, crowned.

This most fortunate return of his Majesty, the King, can not set at naught the sacred oath which has just left her lips.
Henceforth, in council and in audience, her place shall be at his Majesty's right hand, as was the place of that Princess Athalme, daughter of King Kab, in the dynasty of the fall of Rome.

Is it not, therefore, but the more incumbent upon your princess to own her allegiance to the law of the island by keeping her troth with me--that troth witnessed and sanctioned by you yourselves?
This ceremony concluded I will answer the demands of the loyal subjects whose interests alone I serve.

For we obey that which is higher than authority--the law, born in the Beginning--" Prince Tabnit's voice might almost have taken his place in his absence, it was so soft, so fine of texture, no more consciously modulated than is the going of water or the way of a wing.

It was difficult to say whether his words or, so to say, their fine fabric of voice, begot the silence that followed.