"Are you not the master: am not I the slave?"
CHAPTER X.
THE INQUIRY.
While following with absolute obedience the instructions of her husband, the Princess Olsdorf still felt so deeply humiliated by the vileness of the part she had to play that now and again she had thoughts of rebelling. But she knew the character of the prince, she knew that nothing would shake his purpose, and above all she remembered the terrible calmness with which he had said: "If for any reason whatever Monsieur Paul Meyrin does not marry you, I will kill him."
Feeling, then, that she must go forward to the end marked out for her, she had bowed the head and sought forgetfulness in the arms of her lover, whom the most ordinary conventionalities bade her to meet only in secret. Her passion had gained from this unusual mystery a sort of acuteness which gave it an unreal strength, under which she hid from herself the uneasiness she felt. However, she was anxious that an end should be made; she feared what might happen, believing it impossible that there should not be new troubles in store.
She well knew, too, that there were yet many trials to encounter before the decree of divorce would be won.
As for Paul, who still seemed passionately enamored of her, he left his family in ignorance of what was going on, putting off to the last moment the announcement of his approaching marriage.
Meanwhile things followed their legal course, and one morning the princess received from a delegate of the Russian Consistory a summons to appear before him.
To simplify matters, it is needful here to sketch the process to be followed in Russia upon the presentation of a petition for divorce.
As civil marriages are not recognized in the empire of the czars, the ecclesiastical authorities are charged with the trial of cases of divorce, pronouncing or refusing a decree. The authority is made up of two jurisdictions, the Consistory and the Holy Synod. The Consistory is a kind of preliminary tribunal, or rather a court of inquiry and investigation. The Holy Synod is a permanent grand council, invested with every authority in religious matters throughout the schismatical Greek Church of the Russian Empire. The Holy Synod is made up of metropolitans, archbishops, a procurator-general and secretaries. Its seat is at St. Petersburg, whence it governs the affairs spiritual of the empire and the financial business of the Church. It has authority over all prelates and consistories. It exercises a censure over religious books and pamphlets, and enjoys a very wide-reaching power in civil matters, notably in all matrimonial cases. The head procurator who governs it represents the emperor, but it is an error to believe that the Holy Synod obeys the orders of the czar. The autocrat of all the Russias is not, as is often said, at one and the same time emperor and pope in his vast kingdom. He, as well as his people, is subject in religious matters to the ecclesiastical authority of the Holy Synod.