"Do you intend, then, with set purpose, to put an affront upon me in the sight of all Czernova?"
"None but pure hands shall set the diadem upon my head. Shall I accept the Sacrament from one who has insulted me with words of unhallowed love, repeat prayers uttered by your lips? My lord cardinal," she added in scorn, "have you no conscience?"
Probably not. He was indifferent to the moral precepts of religion, if not at heart wholly atheistic, having adopted the ecclesiastic life merely as a stepping-stone to power.
"Is it likewise true that Zabern purposes at no distant date to introduce into the Diet a bill for the expulsion of Jesuits from Czernova?"
"Your eminence has been correctly informed. We cannot tolerate in the principality those whose aim it is to create an imperium in imperio. Besides," added the princess, caustically, "a Jesuit Expulsion Bill will put my Muscovite subjects in a good humor, while not greatly offending the Catholics."
Though maintaining a calm exterior, the cardinal nevertheless listened with secret dismay, for her words were the very death-knell of his ambition. By using the princess as his instrument he had hoped to play the rôle of a Richelieu in Czernova, and to be the supreme director of affairs, secular as well as ecclesiastical. By reason of his supposed conversion of a Greek princess he had obtained a high place in the Pope's favor. He had openly boasted at the Vatican that the Greek heresy would soon vanish from Czernova. But now? The attitude of Barbara and her cabinet showed that he had been building castles in the air.
Was this to be the end of his life's work? Must he write "failure" across the scheme that had occupied his mind for twenty years? It would seem so.
"Is it to be war between us? Good! Thus, then, do I take up the gage flung down by you. On your coronation day, in the sight of all assembled in the cathedral, I shall rise to affirm, ay, and to prove too, that you are not Natalie Lilieska. I shall denounce you as an impostor, as a knowing usurper of the rights of Bora."
"And be arrested as an accomplice of the impostor; since, if I fall, you fall with me."
"Not so, princess; for I shall previously have made my terms with Bora. You may count, now, upon having the Pope as your enemy, since you are bent upon persecuting the Society of Jesus. By falsely claiming to be princess you have imposed upon the Holy Father. You admit a heretical prelate to participate in the ceremony of your coronation. You pretend to be a Catholic, yet your ministers have placarded Slavowitz to the effect that the princess will swear at the altar to preserve inviolate the ancient privileges as well of the Greek as of the Latin Church. Such Laodicean policy will not suit Pio Nono. A word in his ear from me will bring against you a bull of excommunication. And, remember, that the subjects of an excommunicated ruler are absolved from their allegiance."