Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/245

234 yon will essay captivity first, and if that do not break me into betraying my friends to you and assigning you my wealth, why, then, that yon will try—torture! It may be as well to spare you the probation, and to let you know that, though you have fettered me, you have not vanquished me, and never will. Others have died silent, and so can I." The words were spoken tranquilly, with no haste, with no excitement in them; only beneath their repose of utterance was that fine, keen infliction of scorn, that proud, unyielding patience of resolve, which goaded and incensed him as no torrent of reproaches or of lamentations could have done. And yet, even in his wrath, even in his amaze, even in his outraged majesty as priest and autocrat, he could not but yield her admiration—admiration that stung and fanned the passion in him to fire. He stood before her, as a Papal Legate might have stood before an Empress who defied his mission and the might of Rome, rather than as before a helpless and rebel captive. "True!" he said, with that grandeur of dominance which made the iron priests of a dead age the scourge and terror of empires. "True! the church. must cut off and root up, even with steel and flame, the unworthy and the accursed who deny her