Brother Elpidios, if you set fire to the book, you won't be able to read the rest of it. What do you mean, you don't care? You've come all this way, you've read lewd things and turned- well, hardly a hair, and now you want to feed the codex to the brazier a leaf at a time? I don't understand, and I'll own as much. Justinian was just talking about what he might have done if-
Heresy? Blasphemy? Brother, if you don't calm down, you'll feed yourself to the brazier a leaf at a time, sounds like. Tell me what's on your- Oh, marrying three or four times. He wasn't talking about it for the sake of fornication, Brother Elpidios, but for the sake of getting an heir. "It is better to marry than to burn," eh?
Not three times? Especially not four times? Not even to keep the Empire from the threat of civil war? You don't th ink an Emperor would be able to find a priest who would give him a dispensation for something like that? What? You'd break from communion with a priest who did something like that, you'd go into schism? You're a\a160… pious man, Brother Elpidios.
In any case, you don't need to burn the book. Justinian married only twice, and canon law says nothing about that, now does it? He was only saying what he thought about a might-have-been that never was. Maybe he was wrong. It wouldn't have been the only time, God knows.
What about me, Brother? No, I never married, and yes, maybe I'll burn for it. I was like Justinian before he wed Eudokia, and I didn't have his excuse of being a young pup. I liked women so well, I never settled on any one woman. Life is like that sometimes. It'll get right past you if you don't watch out, and then you look back and you say, "Oh, Lord, what have I done?" Or you say, "What have I missed?"
Do I repent of my sinful ways? I've been a blind monk these past twenty years. If I haven't repented by now, when do you suppose I'd get round to it?