“Nay, child, you misunderstand. If it is given to Peter and his successors to forgive sins, then whatever they may do can be no sin, but is, as it were, the act of God himself. You who think your highest virtue is to love God ought to esteem it an honor that you have provoked the love of God’s representative on earth.”
“Fiend!” shrieked the girl. “Help, help!” The words echoed from the wall, but seemed to penetrate no further.
There was no response, and the priest smiled: “It is foolish to resist the Lord who loves you,” he said. “It is in my power to absolve you from sin, and even to grant you indulgence to commit that which might under other circumstances be sin. Don’t be foolish, child.”
He sought to grasp her in his arms again, but she eluded him. Then he began in a pleading voice:
“Is it my fault that I love you? Why are you not as kind to me as you were to that heretic? You are in the confessional, and I can not only absolve you from sin, but I am also pledged to secrecy. Be kind to me.”
“Oh, loathsome thing, I hate you.”
“But I love you.”
“Love, indeed! You pollute the word, like you do the office you hold and the building here and all else that should be sacred.”
“You know not how I love you. Oh, how I long toward you! ‘Item ordinarie mortalia nabenda sunt escula in ore, seu lingua in ore introducta vel excepta.[1]’ Are you not, indeed, the bride of Christ?”
“Oh, devil that you are! It is you who have confessed to me, and though you live to be a century of age, confessing every day such villainy as this, I could but hate you worse with every morn, and never could forgive you. If there is hell, where he who burns in lust and anger, burns in flame, then there’s your place. If there is a heaven that hears the voice of innocence, sending the white angels down to give it succor, then will the heaven open now, and white-robed creatures will deliver me. Oh, thou divine Christ, come now and judge between us. Oh, God of purity, deliver me from this, thine enemy.”