“Clement XIV. was a fool.  To brand and abolish our Company was an absurd fault.  To protect and make it harmless, by declaring himself the General of the Order, is what he should have done.  The Company, then at his mercy, would have consented to anything.  He would have absorbed us, made us vassals of the Holy See, and would no longer have had to fear our services.  Clement XIV. died of the cholic.  Let him heed who hears.  In a similar case, I should not die the same death.”

Just then, the clear and liquid voice of Rose-Pompon was again heard.  Rodin bounded with rage upon his seat; but soon, as he listened to the following verse, new to him (for, unlike Philemon’s widow, he had not his Beranger at his fingers’ ends), the Jesuit, accessible to certain odd, superstitious notions, was confused and almost frightened at so singular a coincidence.  It is Beranger’s Good Pope who speaks—­

   “What are monarchs? sheepish sots! 
   Or they’re robbers, puffed with pride,
   Wearing badges of crime blots,
   Till their certain graves gape wide. 
   If they’ll pour out coin for me,
   I’ll absolve them—­skin and bone! 
   If they haggle—­they shall see,
   My nieces dancing on their throne! 
   So laugh away! 
   Leap, my fay! 
   Only watch one hurt the thunder
   First of all by Zeus under,
   I’m the Pope, the whole world’s wonder!”

Rodin, half-risen from his chair, with outstretched neck and attentive eye, was still listening, when Rose-Pompon, flitting like a bee from flower to flower of her repertoire, had already begun the delightful air of Colibri.  Hearing no more, the Jesuit reseated himself, in a sort of stupor; but, after some minutes’ reflection, his countenance again brightened up, and he seemed to see a lucky omen in this singular incident.  He resumed his pen, and the first words he wrote partook, as it were, of this strange confidence in fate.

“I have never had more hope of success than at this moment.  Another reason to neglect nothing.  Every presentiment demands redoubled zeal.  A new thought occurred to me yesterday.

“We shall act here in concert.  I have founded an ultra-Catholic paper called Neighborly Love.  From its ultramontane, tyrannical, liberticidal fury, it will be thought the organ of Rome.  I will confirm these reports.  They will cause new terrors.

“That will be well.

“I shall raise the question of the liberty of instruction.  The raw liberals will support us.  Like fools, they admit us to equal rights; when our privileges, our influence of the confessional, our obedience to Rome, all place us beyond the circle of equal rights, by the advantages which we enjoy.  Double fools! they think us disarmed, because they have disarmed themselves towards us.

“A burning question—­irritating clamors—­new cause of disgust for the Weak Man.  Every little makes a mickle.

“That also is very well.