Deceived as to the cause of this impression, Rodin exclaimed with indignation, in a voice interrupted by deep gaspings for breath:  “It is pity for this impious race, that I read upon your faces?  Pity for the young girl, who never enters a church, and erects pagan altars in her habitation?  Pity for Hardy, the sentimental blasphemer, the philanthropic atheist, who had no chapel in his factory, and dared to blend the names of Socrates, Marcus, Aurelius, and Plato, with our Savior’s?  Pity for the Indian worshipper of Brahma?  Pity for the two sisters, who have never even been baptized?  Pity for that brute, Jacques Rennepont?  Pity for the stupid imperial soldier, who has Napoleon for his god, and the bulletins of the Grand Army for his gospel?  Pity for this family of renegades, whose ancestor, a relapsed heretic, not content with robbing us of our property, excites from his tomb, at the end of a century and a half, his cursed race to lift their heads against us?  What! to defend ourselves from these vipers, we shall not have the right to crush them in their own venom?—­I tell you, that it is to serve heaven, and to give a salutary example to the world, to devote, by unchaining their own passions, this impious family to grief and despair and death!”

As he spoke thus, Rodin was dreadful in his ferocity; the fire of his eyes became still more brilliant; his lips were dry and burning, a cold sweat bathed his temples, which could be seen throbbing; an icy shudder ran through his frame.  Attributing these symptoms to fatigue from writing through a portion of the night, and wishing to avoid fainting, he went to the sideboard, filled another glass with wine, which he drank off at a draught, and returned as the cardinal said to him:  “If your course with regard to this family needed justification, my good father, your last word would have victoriously justified it.  Not only are you right, according to your own casuists, but there is nothing in your proceedings contrary to human laws.  As for the divine law, it is pleasing to the Lord to destroy impiety with its own weapons.”

Conquered, as well as the others, by Rodin’s diabolical assurance, and brought back to a kind of fearful admiration, Father d’Aigrigny said to him:  “I confess I was wrong in doubting the judgment of your reverence.  Deceived by the appearance of the means employed, I could not judge of their connection, and above all, of their results.  I now see, that, thanks to you, success is no longer doubtful.”

“This is an exaggeration,” replied Rodin, with feverish impatience; “all these passions are at work, but the moment is critical.  As the alchemist bends over the crucible, which may give him either treasures or sudden death—­I alone at this moment—­”

Rodin did not finish the sentence.  He pressed both his hands to his forehead, with a stifled cry of pain.

“What is the matter?” said Father d’Aigrigny.  “For some moments you have been growing fearfully pale.”