'You merit excommunication, my daughter,' said the haughty prelate, his brow black with wrath. He saw no reason why this marriage, which had offended all her house, should not be annulled by the all-powerful verdict of the Vatican. Such cases were rare, but it would be possible to include hers amongst them. The children could be consigned to religious houses, brought up to religious lives, unknown to and unknowing of the world.
'If the man whom you chose to wed,' he continued sternly, 'has offended or outraged you so greatly, let your relatives judge him and deal with him. You were warned against the gift of your hand to a stranger with an uncertain past behind him; he had not the eminence, the repute, the character that should have been demanded in your husband. But you were inflexible in your resolve then, as you are now in your silence.'
'I know of no one living to whom I owe any account,' she said with haughty decision; 'no one to whom I was bound to lay bare my mind and heart then, or to whom I am so bound now.'
'You are so bound every time you kneel in the confessional.'
'To reveal my own sins, perchance, not his.'
'Your soul should be as an open book before your priest.'
'Your Eminence will pardon me. I bow willingly and reverently to the Church in all matters spiritual, but in the rule of my own conduct I admit no guide but my conscience. My sorrows are all my own. No priest or layman shall intrude upon them.'
She spoke with peremptory and unyielding decision; the old spirit of her race was aroused in her, which in times bygone had bearded popes and monarchs, and braved the thunders of excommunication. They had been pious sons of Rome, but yet ofttimes rebellious ones; when their honour called one way and the priests pointed the other, they had lifted their swords in the sunlight and gone whither honour bade.
The Churchman knew that power of secular revolt which had been always latent in the Szalras blood; he knew now that, armed with the weapons of the Church though he was, he might as well seek to bow the mountains down as bend her will. He took for granted that her wrongs were great enough to entitle her to freedom; he had thought that she might wed again with his nephew, who had loved her so long; their mighty fortunes would have fitly met; this hateful union with a foreigner, a sceptic, a debauchee, would have become a thing of the past, washed away into absolute non-existence;—so he had dreamed, and he found himself confronted with a woman's illogical inconsistency and obstinacy.
He was deeply incensed. He assailed her for many days with all the subtle arguments of the ecclesiastical armoury, but he made no impression. She utterly refused to tell why she had exiled her husband from her house, and she as utterly refused to take any measures to attain her own freedom. When he left her he said a word of rebuke that long lingered in her memory. 'You are rebellious and almost heretical, my daughter. You entrench yourself in your silence and your pride, which you appear to forget are heinous sins when opposed to your spiritual superiors. But this only I will remind you of: if you deny the Church the power to annul the union of which its sacrament sanctified the consummation, be at least consistent: do not absolve yourself from its duties.'