Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/167

 gree contenting her desire of union with a bridegroom, without offence to the ordinations of the Church: he proposed to her a spiritual wedlock, if she could resolve on a slight change of the veil, the Saracenic for the Nun’s. This proposal suddenly awakened in the Princess such a horror at veils, that she directly tore away her own; sank full of despair before the holy footstool, and with uplifted hands and tearful eyes, conjured the venerable Father by his sacred slipper, not to do violence to her heart, and constrain her to bestow it elsewhere.

The sight of her beauty was more eloquent than her lips; it enraptured all present; and the tear which gathered in her heavenly eye fell like a burning drop of naphtha on the Holy Father’s heart, and kindled the small fraction of earthly tinder that still lay hid there, and warmed it into sympathy for the petitioner. “Rise, beloved daughter,” said he, “and weep not! What has been determined in Heaven, shall be fulfilled in thee on Earth. In three days thou shalt know whether this thy first prayer to the Church can be granted by that gracious Mother, or must be denied.” Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the casuists in Rome; had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distributed to each; and locked them up in the Rotunda, with the warning that no one of them should be let out again till the question had been determined unanimously. So long as the loaves and wine held out, the disputes were so violent, that all the Saints, had they been convened in the church, could not have argued with greater noise. But so soon as the Digestive Faculty began to have a voice in the meeting, he was listened to with the deepest attention, and happily he spoke in favour of the Count, who had got a sumptuous feast made ready for the entertainment of the casuistic Doctors, when the Papal seal should be removed from their door. The Bull of Dispensation was drawn out in proper form of law; in furtherance of which the fair Angelica had, not at all reluctantly, inflicted a determined cut upon the treasures of Egypt. Father Gregory bestowed his benediction on the noble pair, and sent them away betrothed. They lost no time in leaving Peter’s Patrimony for the territories of the Count, to celebrate their nuptials on arriving.

When Count Ernst, on this side the Alps, again inhaled his native air, and felt it come soft and kindly round his heart,