The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series by Rafael Sabatini
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page 11 of 294 (03%)
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Christ; and my obedience, which I owe to our Holy Father the
Pope." The prince considered him in silence, mastering his passionate, impetuous nature. "Go," he growled at last. The prelate bowed his head, his eyes not daring to meet his prince's. "God keep you, lord," he almost sobbed, and so went out. But though stirred by his affection for the prince to whom he owed so much, though knowing in his inmost heart that Affonso Henriques was in the right, the Bishop of Coimbra did not swerve from his duty to Rome, which was as plain as it was unpalatable. Betimes next morning word was brought to Affonso Henriques in the Alcazar of Coimbra that a parchment was nailed to the door of the Cathedral, setting forth his excommunication, and that the Bishop--either out of fear or out of sorrow--had left the city, journeying northward towards Oporto. Affonso Henriques passed swiftly from incredulity to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve, which was as mad and harebrained as could have been expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical, it was invested with a certain wild sanity. In full armour, a white cloak simply embroidered in gold at the edge and knotted at the shoulder, he rode to the Cathedral, |
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