"Then," he asked, softly, "you would dare arrest her in Capri?"
The eyes of Monsignore flashed upon him.
"Dare is not a word to use to Rome!"
It was the haughty defiance and self-deification of the Pontifical Power roused, as it had roused of old against Emperors and Kings, rebels in the Cloisters and rebels in the Courts, against the sceptre of Barbarossa as against the science of Abélard, of the Power which refuses to see that this day is not as that, which denies that the dawn has shone because its fiat has gone forth for darkness to endure.
"Your Grace cannot think that I used the word save as suggestive of what is expedient. Your object is to make the Countess Vassalis a political prisoner. Is it advisable to allow her the halo of political martyrdom? Do you wish to give the enemies of the Church and King the power to compare you to a second Cyril, and her to a second Hypatia?"
Giulio Villaflor smiled a very expressive, a very devilish smile, mellow though it was.
"No. I have no desire to deify another Greek courtesan."
Was the word as foul slander to the living Athenian as it was to the dead Alexandrian?
