"Ere the church can bless your meditated marriage union with this your high-born relative," continued the abbot, with calm coldness, "the holy father's dispensation and indulgence are altogether necessary, and this on a two-fold account; pro primo,--because of the tie of relationship by marriage; and pro secundo,--because of the taint of relationship by blood. As regards the first point, royal sir! the aforesaid Princess Ingeborg's uncle, Count Gerhard of Holstein, is, as is well known, by his marriage with your most royal mother, the dowager Queen Agnes, your grace's present step-father. Count Gerhard's fatherly relationship, as well to that noble princess, as to your Grace! causes an almost brotherly and sisterly connection between you and the young princess;--and marriage between brother and sister, or between those who may be considered as such, is sternly forbidden by every law of God and man----" "You have made us out brother and sister in a trice; it is a singular way of bringing people into near relationship," interrupted the king, "yet pass but over the relationship by marriage, with my stepfather's niece, venerable sir!--there is not a single drop of the same blood therein. Nought but a near and actual blood relationship do I acknowledge to be so real a hindrance that it can only be removed by God's vicegerent upon earth." "Your grace is right in some respects," answered the abbot, "inasmuch as it _is_ the tie of blood, which in this instance constitutes the sin, and makes every marriage union between relations, which hath not been sanctified by the indulgence of the church, an unholy act, a deadly sin, and a damnable connection." "Ha! do you rave?" cried the king: his brow flushed; anger glowed in his cheek and on his lofty brow, but he subdued his rising ire. "If terrible words, without truth or reason, had power to slay the soul, I should long since have been spiritually murdered," he continued in a lower tone. "Now, say on, Sir Abbot!--how near reckon you, then, the blood relationship, which, according to your bold assertion, may plunge me into deadly sin, and into a gulf of horror and ignominy, if I await not a permit from Rome to perpetrate such crime?" "It is easy to reckon up the degrees of forbidden affinity," answered the abbot, with imperturbable coolness. "The high-born Princess Ingeborg is, as is known, a legitimate daughter of King Magnus, who was a legitimate son of the high-born Birger Jarl, whose consort, the lady Ingeborg, was a legitimate daughter of King Eric the tenth, whose Queen Regize was, lastly, a legitimate daughter of your grace's departed royal father's--father's--father's father;--ergo, the princess is a great-great grandchild of your grace's grandfather's departed royal father, Waldemar the Great, of blessed memory!"