The law protects me from such interference, and fellows of your cloth are not very popular at present." "The law," answered the priest, controlling his wrath, "protects children against their parents.

The law which you invoke provides that a father shall not force his daughter to marry against her will, and I believe that considerable penalties are incurred in such cases." "What do you know of law, except how to elude it ?" inquired Marzio defiantly.
Not half an hour had elapsed since he had been haranguing the admiring company of his friends, and his words came easily.

Moreover, it was a long time since he had broken through the constraint he felt in Don Paolo's presence, and the opportunity having presented itself was not to be lost.
"Who are you that should teach me ?" he repeated, raising his voice to a strained key and gesticulating fiercely.

"You, your very existence is a lie, and you are the server of lies, and you and your fellow liars would have created them if they didn't already exist, you love them so.

You live by a fraud, and you want to drag everybody into the comedy you play every day in your churches, everybody who is fool enough to drop a coin into your greedy palm! What right have you to talk to men?
Do you work?
Do you buy?
Do you sell?
You are worse than those fine gentlemen who do nothing because their fathers stole our money, for you live by stealing it yourselves! And you set yourselves up as judges over an honest man to tell him what he is to do with his daughter?
You fool, you thing in petticoats, you deceiver of women, you charlatan, you mountebank, go! Go and perform your antics before your altars, and leave hardworking men like me to manage their families as they can, and to marry their daughters to whom they will!" Marzio had rolled off his string of invective in such a tone, and so rapidly, that it had been impossible to interrupt him.