“Precisely,” said Father d’Aigrigny, dryly.

“Well, I confess,” resumed Rodin, in a sardonic tone, “just as you did great things, coarse things, turbulent things, I have been doing little, puerile, secret things.  Oh, heaven! you cannot imagine what a foolish part I, who passed for a man of enlarged views, have been acting for the last six weeks.”

“I should never have allowed myself to address such a reproach to your reverence, however deserved it may appear,” said Father d’Aigrigny, with a bitter smile.

“A reproach?” said Rodin, shrugging his shoulders; “a reproach?  You shall be the judge.  Do you know what I wrote about you, some six weeks ago?  Here it is:  `Father d’Aigrigny has excellent qualities.  He will be of much service to me’—­and from to-morrow I shall employ you very actively, added Rodin, by way of parenthesis—­`but he is not great enough to know how to make himself little on occasion.’  Do you understand?”

“Not very well,” said Father d’Aigrigny, blushing.

“So much the worse for you,” answered Rodin; “it only proves that I was right.  Well, since I must tell you, I have been wise enough to play the most foolish part for six whole weeks.  Yes, I have chatted nonsense with a grisette—­have talked of liberty, progress, humanity, emancipation of women, with a young, excited girl; of Napoleon the Great, and all sorts of Bonapartist idolatry, with an old, imbecile soldier; of imperial glory, humiliation of France, hopes in the King of Rome, with a certain marshal of France, who, with a heart full of adoration for the robber of thrones, that was transported to Saint-Helena, has a head as hollow and sonorous as a trumpet, into which you have only to blow some warlike or patriotic notes, and it will flourish away of itself, without knowing why or how.  More than all this, I have talked of love affairs with a young tiger.  When I told you it was lamentable to see a man of any intelligence descend, as I have done, to all such petty ways of connecting the thousand threads of this dark web, was I not right?  Is it not a fine spectacle to see the spider obstinately weaving its net?—­to see the ugly little black animal crossing thread upon thread, fastening it here, strengthening it there, and again lengthening it in some other place?  You shrug your shoulders in pity; but return two hours after—­what will you find?  The little black animal eating its fill, and in its web a dozen of the foolish flies, bound so securely, that the little black animal has only to choose the moment of its repast.”

As he uttered those words, Rodin smiled strangely; his eyes, gradually half closed, opened to their full width, and seemed to shine more than usual.  The Jesuit felt a sort of feverish excitement, which he attributed to the contest in which he had engaged before these eminent personages, who already felt the influence of his original and cutting speech.

Father d’Aigrigny began to regret having entered on the contest.  He resumed, however, with ill-repressed irony:  “I do not dispute the smallness of your means.  I agree with you, they are very puerile—­they are even very vulgar.  But that is not quite sufficient to give an exalted notion of your merit.  May I be allowed to ask—­”