"By the Holy Virgin Mother of Our Lord!" cried the king, his brow reddening and glowing like heated iron, "this insolence is beyond belief! Have they then dared to put our realm in interdict?"
This question, though made generally, was too evidently applied to the bishops, for them to escape reply; and the archbishop of Rheims, though with a flush on his cheek, that bespoke no small anxiety for the result, replied boldly, at least as far as words went.
"It is but too true, sire. Our holy father the pope, the common head of the great Christian church, after having in vain attempted to lead you by gentle means to religious obedience, has at length been compelled, in some sort, to use severity; as a kind parent is often obliged to chastise his----"
"How now!" cried Philip in a voice of thunder: "Dare you use such language to me? I marvel you sink not to the earth, bishop, rather than so pronounce your own condemnation!--Put those men forth!" he continued, pointing to the two Italians, who, not understanding any thing that was said at the table, continued to read aloud the interdict and anathema, interrupting and drowning every other voice, with a sort of thorough bass of curses, that, detached and disjointed as they were, almost approached the ridiculous. "Put them forth!" thundered the king to his men-at-arms. "If they go not willingly, cast them out headlong!--But no!" he added, after a moment, "they are but instruments--use them firmly, but courteously, serjeant. Let me not see them again.--And now, archbishop, tell me, have you dared to give your countenance and assent to this bold insolence of the pontiff of Rome?"
"Alas! sire, what could I do?" demanded the archbishop, in a much more humble tone than that which he had before used.
"What could you do!" exclaimed Philip. "By the joyeuse of St. Charlemagne! do you ask me what you could do? Assert the rights of the clergy of France!--assert the rights of the king!--refuse to recognise the usurped power of an ambitious prelate! Yield him obedience in lawful things; but stand firmly against him, where he stretched out his hand to seize a prerogative that belongs not to his place! This could you have done, sir bishop! and, by the Lord that liveth, you shall find it the worse for you, that you have not done it!"
"But, sire," urged one of the prelates on the king's right, "the blessed pope is our general and common father!"
"Is it the act of a father to invade his children's rights?" demanded Philip in the same vehement tone--"is it not rather the act of a bad stepfather, who, coming in, pillages his new wife's children of their inheritance?"
"By my life! a good likeness have you found, sir king!" said the blunt Count de Nevers. "I never heard a better. The holy church is the poor simple wife, who takes for her second husband this pope Innocent, who tries to pillage the children--namely, the church of France--of their rights of deciding on all ecclesiastical questions within the realm."
"It is too true, indeed!" said the king. "Now, mark me, prelates of France! But you first, archbishop of Rheims! Did you not solemnly pronounce the dissolution of my marriage with Ingerburge of Denmark, after mature consideration and consultation with a general synod of the clergy of France?"