For Taquisara and Don Teodoro knew, each knowing also that the other
knew, that what Veronica believed to have been done that day had not
been really done, save in the intention, and that what had really been
done must by Church law and right be undone before she could be truly
married to Gianluca della Spina. That is to say, if the thing done had
any value whatsoever before God and man.
It is easy to say that in other lands and under other practices of faith
the four persons concerned in what had happened might have honestly told
themselves that such a marriage was no marriage at all. An unbelieving
Italian, and there are many in the cities, though few in the country,
would have laughed and said that the important point was the legal union
pronounced by the municipal authority, and that since there had been
none here, there was nothing to undo. Yet if by any similar
chance--more difficult to imagine, of course, but conceivable for
argument's sake--the same mistake had occurred in a legal marriage by a
syndic, that same unbelieving Italian would have felt in regard to it
precisely what Taquisara and Don Teodoro felt, namely, that the union
was well nigh indissoluble. For Italy, as a nation and a whole, while
imitating other nations in many respects, has again and again refused to
listen to any suggestion embodying a law of divorce. To all Italians,
high, low, atheists, bigots, monarchists, republicans,--whatever they
may be,--marriage is an absolutely indissoluble bond.
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