'Nothing of that kind is impossible to dukes and princes.'
'I do not understand you,' said I, considerably ruffled by a mixture of anger and agitation which I laboured in vain to conceal. 'I remember a little boy named Duke of Alsace, who accompanied Charles IV. in his procession through Nanci.'
'With his coronet borne before him by a knight of Malta—myself. Well, that little boy is now the husband of Marie Louise,' said he, with a sneer on his pale lip.
'And this espousal—' I gasped.
'Is valid and true, though Louise is nearly twenty and her spouse is not yet ten years of age.'
'Infamous and absurd!'
'Absurd as it is cruel!' added René, with deep emotion; 'but such unions and such measures are justified by the crooked policy of princes and the stern pressure of war. This child is hereditary Duke of Alsace and Lord of the nine Bailiewicks of Leichtenbourg, Baron of Landau and Lauterbourg, of Ferette and Aultkirk; consequently to unite him more closely to the crushed house of Lorraine, duke Charles his guardian—sharp, short, and decisive in everything—arranged, and in three days executed the hitherto unconceived idea of espousing his daughter, in all the bloom of beauty and of womanhood, to a sickly little child.'
'And who performed this atrocious ceremony?' I asked, through my clenched teeth.
'The most reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of Strasbourg,' replied René, his dark eyes flashing with irony.
'And when did this happen?'