He turned to Dunoisse and continued:
“Colonel Dunoisse, the fact of your near alliance by blood with the reigning House of Widinitz is incontestable and undeniable. Did not the Salic law obtain in this principality, upon you would undoubtedly devolve the Hereditary Crown.”
His great voice seemed to be a palpable presence in the room. While he spoke, not by any means at the full pitch of it, the wires of a spinet that stood against the wall vibrated audibly; and the crystal pendants on the chandeliers and mantel-vases tinkled with a gentle musical sound. While another sound, of which Dunoisse had been faintly conscious for some time, and which might have been the muttering of distant thunder; or the humming of innumerable bees; or the purring of a cat of Brobdingnagian proportions, was stilled as though the unknown forces that combined to cause it had caught an echo of the powerful tones, and held their peace to listen.
As the priest went on:
“Undoubtedly, but the fundamental law as it stands strictly excludes the female line and the males derived from it. And were it possible to change this law, even at the eleventh hour, I am deputed to say to you that the procedure would be strenuously opposed by the person who would in that event stand as the direct dynastic successor to the hereditary authority!”
“My mother!”
Dunoisse, through whom the words had darted with a shock and thrill resembling the discharge from an electric battery, thrust from him the chair on which he had hitherto indifferently leaned, and turned upon the speaker a face that had suddenly grown sharp and pinched, saying in a voice that was curiously flat and toneless:
“You are in communication with my mother, sir? You have been deputed by her to say this to me?”
The priest bowed assent, and continued calmly:
“For, though it be true that the Almighty, in His Infinite wisdom, has chastened us Catholics of Widinitz by placing over us a sovereign of the Reformed Faith; and, though we cannot but deplore the rigor with which the Regent has treated certain communities of religious hitherto resident in the principality; we are bound to own that in other respects we have been treated with clemency and justice. In addition, the domestic life of our Regent is free from scandal....”