Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/244

233 the courteous, polished suavity which never until now had failed him. "You speak idly," he said, with a jarring anger and insolence in his voice. "You toy with words you know not the meaning of; you little dream what our 'vigour,' what our 'vengeance' can be to those who brave us!"

Her eyes rested calmly and contemptuously on his:—

"Do I not? When my best-beloved friend Virginia von Evon was scourged in the streets of Pesth because she would not yield up a Hungarian 'rebel' who had trusted his life to her keeping; when Pauline Lasla perished under the ice and the irons of Siberia because she had carried despatches for a Polish liberator; when the Countess Rossellio, at eighty years of age, was thrown into a dungeon by your order because she had lost her two noble sons in the cause of her Italy; when the wife of Manuel Canaro was shot down before his eyes by the soldiers of the Pope for no sin save that of loving liberty and him too well; when I have seen those and a score more martyrs like them, do you think I know nothing of how your hierarchy and your monarchy can revenge themselves on women? It is you, Monsignore, who speak idly; I am well aware that