Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/240

Rh you will give me no liberty while I have life I perfectly understand, and that King Francis and the Pontifical States alike treat the love of freedom and of justice as a convict's crime, all Europe is well aware. If you allude to my riches, imagining that I will purchase my safety, you err; I will not swell a tyrant's treasuries to gain a personal indulgence."

Rage, hot and lowering, flushed Giulio Villaflor's brow as he heard; yet something of that unwilling homage which had been wrong from him when he had said, "She has the daring of the Cæsars!" was wrested from him now in an admiration that was half amaze, half intolerance; wholly sudden and very ferocious passion was controlled beneath the suave mellow hypocrisies which by long usage had become to him as second nature.

"Madame," he said, with a wave of his long delicate hand, "there are enormities and conspiracies of such magnitude that the wealth of the world could not purchase condonation or escape for them. Those of the Countess Idalia must be expiated; they cannot buy absolution either from the church she has blasphemed or the throne she has shaken. Captivity awaits you—captivity till death. Has it no terrors for you—for you, in your beauty.