The same servant with the mild countenance, who had introduced and shown out Faringhea, here entered the room, after knocking discreetly at the door.  He held in his hand a sort of game-bag, which he gave to Rodin, saying:  “Here is what M. Morok has just brought; he came in by the Rue Vieille.”

The servant withdrew, and Rodin, opening the bag, said to Father d’Aigrigny, as he showed him the contents:  “The medal, and Van Dael’s letter.  Morok has been quick at his work.”

“One more danger avoided,” said the marquis; “it is a pity to be forced to such measures.”

“We must only blame the rascal who has obliged us to have recourse to them.  I will send instantly to the hotel where the Indian lodges.”

“And, at seven in the morning, you will conduct Gabriel to the Rue Saint Francois.  It is there that I must have with him the interview which he has so earnestly demanded these three days.”

“I informed him of it this evening, and he awaits your orders.”

“At last, then,” said Father d’Aigrigny, “after so many struggles, and fears, and crosses, only a few hours separate us from the moment which we have so long desired.”

We now conduct the reader to the house in the Rue Saint-Francois.

[13] The doctrine of passive and absolute obedience, the principal tool in the hands of the Jesuits, as summed up in these terrible words of the dying Loyola—­that every member of the order should be in the hands of his superiors as a dead body—­’perinde ad cadaver’.

CHAPTER XVII.

The house in the Rue saint-Francois.

On entering the Rue Saint-Gervais, by the Rue Dore (in the Marais), you would have found yourself, at the epoch of this narrative, directly opposite to an enormously high wall, the stones of which were black and worm-eaten with age.  This wall, which extended nearly the whole length of that solitary street, served to support a terrace shaded by trees of some hundred years old, which thus grew about forty feet above the causeway.  Through their thick branches appeared the stone front, peaked roof and tall brick chimneys of an antique house, the entrance of which was situated in the Rue Saint-Francois, not far from the Rue Saint Gervais corner.  Nothing could be more gloomy than the exterior of this abode.  On the entrance-side also was a very high wall, pierced with two or three loop-holes, strongly grated.  A carriage gateway in massive oak, barred with iron, and studded with large nail-heads, whose primitive color disappeared beneath a thick layer of mud, dust, and rust, fitted close into the arch of a deep recess, forming the swell of a bay window above.  In one of these massive gates was a smaller door, which served for ingress and egress to Samuel the Jew, the guardian of this dreary abode.  On passing the threshold, you came to a passage, formed in the building which