" He was interrupted by the Voivodin, who, standing up beside him and holding his left arm, said: "Do not, President, and Lords all, think me wanting in that respect of a wife for husband which in the Blue Mountains we hold so dear, if I venture to interrupt my lord.

I am here, not merely as a wife, but as Voivodin of Vissarion, and by the memory of all the noble women of that noble line I feel constrained to a great duty.

We women of Vissarion, in all the history of centuries, have never put ourselves forward in rivalry of our lords.

Well I know that my own dear lord will forgive me as wife if I err; but I speak to you, the Council of the nation, from another ground and with another tongue.

My lord does not, I fear, know as you do, and as I do too, that of old, in the history of this Land, when Kingship was existent, that it was ruled by that law of masculine supremacy which, centuries after, became known as the _Lex Salica_.
Lords of the Council of the Blue Mountains, I am a wife of the Blue Mountains--as a wife young as yet, but with the blood of forty generations of loyal women in my veins.