The injured party must address his or her complaint to the Consistory. This first tribunal examines the facts, and if it finds in them primâ facie a case for divorce, it tries first of all to reconcile the petitioner and respondent, summoning them before it, and seeking to persuade the one to pardon and the other to return to the path of duty.
Not until it has failed in this attempt at reconciliation does the Consistory inform the Holy Synod of the petition that has been made to it, and it is only after a long and careful examination that the higher court will pronounce the decree of divorce, inflicting upon the guilty one at the same time a religious penance and celibacy.
The penance may be a stay of several months in a convent, but the condemned one can easily escape from the enforced retirement by the payment of a sum of money. As for the decree of celibacy, the emperor alone, on the recommendation of the Holy Synod, can abrogate it; but if authority is sometimes given to a divorced husband to marry again, the grace is always withheld from a guilty wife. A woman can marry a second time only in case of the decree having been pronounced against her first husband, or when the separation has been without stain upon the honor of the husband or wife; for instance, in case of incompatibility of temper, or of certain infirmities duly provided for by the civil code.
Formerly, it is true, matters of the kind were managed among the Russians with greater simplicity. The husband and wife who longed for a separation went out of their house holding a piece of linen or other thin stuff, each of them having an end of it. So they went to the nearest public square and pulled till the piece of stuff parted. Then they went each their way: they were divorced.
Unhappily for the Princess Olsdorf this was no longer the practice; the summons of the delegate of the Consistory recalled the fact to her. She knew that she would again be brought face to face with her husband, to accuse him of having been unfaithful to her; and, though the lesson had been taught her, and mortifying as was the memory she had of the encounter with the beautiful Vera Soublaieff in the Rue Auber, still, it is not hard to suppose, she dreaded not being able to support her petition with due firmness.
The arch-priest of the Russian Church in Paris was at this period the Pope Joseph Wasilieff, an old man full of wit and kindness. Husband and wife must appear before him. After receiving the plaint of the Princess Olsdorf, the Consistory of St. Petersburg had sent a commission of inquiry to the venerable priest of the Rue Daru.
On the day and at the hour indicated Lise Olsdorf attended at Pope Wasilieff's. The prince had been there a few minutes. On entering the room where the priest awaited her, the guilty wife saw her husband; she hesitated and fell back a pace, but a look from Pierre Olsdorf made her understand that, not shrinking or pausing, she must play her part to its last line.
"Madame la Princess," said the venerable Joseph Wasilieff, "I am charged by the Consistory to question you on the facts you have reported to it, and I must also, in conformity with the law as well as in pursuance of my duty as a minister, ask you if you persist in your petition. Before you reply to me, let me urge how generous it would be on your part to forget the outrage you have suffered. Pardon it—for the honor of the name you still bear, for the sake of your children's future. You would know how to win again your husband's heart and you would avoid a great scandal."
Pale and trembling Lise Olsdorf found not a word to say. Leaning back in the deep chair in which she was seated she remained there silent and with downcast eyes.
"As for you, prince," the pope went on, "you can not hide from yourself the gravity of the sin you have been guilty of. The sin is doubly to be condemned in that your accomplice in it was a young girl over whom you had the authority of a master, and whom you carried off from her father to give her in your house the position that your legitimate wife alone has the right to fill. I am convinced that if you would but express the regret that you should feel for your past conduct, Madame la Princess would pardon you."