desolate hole.  A narrow window, with dirty panes, hardly gave any light to this room, which was almost deprived of air by the height of the building in front; two old cotton pocket handkerchiefs, fastened together with pins, and made to slide upon a string stretched across the window, served for curtains.  The plaster of the roof, coming through the broken and disjointed tiles, showed the extreme neglect of the inhabitant of this abode.  After locking his door, Rodin threw his hat and umbrella on the bed, placed his basket on the ground, set the radish and bread on the table, and kneeling down before his stove, stuffed it with fuel, and lighted it by blowing with vigorous lungs on the embers contained in his earthen pot.

When, to use the consecrated expression, the stove began to draw, Rodin spread out the handkerchiefs, which served him for curtains; then, thinking himself quite safe from every eye, he took from the side-pocket of his great-coat the letter that Mother Arsene had given him.  In doing so, he brought out several papers and different articles; one of these papers, folded into a thick and rumpled packet, fell upon the table, and flew open.  It contained a silver cross of the Legion of Honor, black with time.  The red ribbon of this cross had almost entirely lost its original color.  At sight of this cross, which he replaced in his pocket with the medal of which Faringhea had despoiled Djalma, Rodin shrugged his shoulders with a contemptuous and sardonic air; then, producing his large silver watch, he laid it on the table by the side of the letter from Rome.  He looked at this letter with a singular mixture of suspicion and hope, of fear, and impatient curiosity.  After a moment’s reflection, he prepared to unseal the envelope; but suddenly he threw it down again upon the table, as if, by a strange caprice, he had wished to prolong for a few minutes that agony of uncertainty, as poignant and irritating as the emotion of the gambler.

Looking at his watch, Rodin resolved not to open the letter, until the hand should mark half-past nine, of which it still wanted seven minutes.  In one of those whims of puerile fatalism, from which great minds have not been exempt, Rodin said to himself:  “I burn with impatience to open this letter.  If I do not open it till half-past nine, the news will he favorable.”  To employ these minutes, Rodin took several turns up and down the room, and stood in admiring contemplation before two old prints, stained with damp and age, and fastened to the wall by rusty nails.  The first of these works of art—­the only ornaments with which Rodin had decorated this hole—­was one of those coarse pictures, illuminated with red, yellow, green, and blue, such as are sold at fairs; an Italian inscription announced that this print had been manufactured at Rome.  It represented a woman covered with rags, bearing a wallet, and having a little child upon her knees; a horrible hag of a fortune-teller held in her hands the hand of the little child, and seemed to read there his future fate, for these words in large blue letters issued from her mouth:  “Sara Papa” (he shall be Pope).