At these words, Rodin’s blood ran cold, but he maintained his immovable calmness, and said simply:  “Where is Father Caboccini?”

“In the next room, father.”

“Beg him to walk in, and leave us,” said the other.

A second after, Father Caboccini of Rome entered the room and was left alone with Rodin.

CHAPTER LXII.

To A socius, A socius and A half.

The Reverend Father Caboccini, the Roman Jesuit who now came to visit Rodin, was a short man of about thirty years of age, plump, in good condition, and with an abdomen that swelled out his black cassock.  The good little father was blind with one eye, but his remaining organ of vision sparkled with vivacity.  His rosy countenance was gay, smiling, joyous, splendidly crowned with thick chestnut hair, which curled like a wax doll’s.  His address was cordial to familiarity, and his expansive and petulant manners harmonized well with his general appearance.  In a second, Rodin had taken his measure of the Italian emissary; and as he knew the practice of his Company, and the ways of Rome, he felt by no means comfortable at sight of this jolly little father, with such affable manners.  He would have less feared some tall, bony priest, with austere and sepulchral countenance, for he knew that the Company loves to deceive by the outward appearance of its agents; and if Rodin guessed rightly, the cordial address of this personage would rather tend to show that he was charged with some fatal mission.

Suspicious, attentive, with eye and mind on the watch, like an old wolf, expecting an attack, Rodin advanced as usual, slowly and tortuously towards the little man, so as to have time to examine him thoroughly, and penetrate beneath his jovial outside.  But the Roman left him no space for that purpose.  In his impetuous affection he threw himself right on the neck of Rodin, pressed him in his arms with an effusion of tenderness, and kissed him over and over again upon both cheeks, so loudly and plentifully that the echo resounded through the apartment.  In his life Rodin had never been so treated.  More and more uneasy at the treachery which must needs lurk under such warm embraces, and irritated by his own evil presentiments, the French Jesuit did, all he could to extricate himself from the Roman’s exaggerated tokens of tenderness.  But the latter kept his hold; his arms, though short, were vigorous, and Rodin was kissed over and over again, till the little one-eyed man was quite out of breath.  It is hardly necessary to state that these embraces were accompanied by the most friendly, affectionate, and fraternal exclamations—­all in tolerably good French, but with a strong Italian accent, which we muss beg the reader to supply for himself, after we have given a single specimen.  It will perhaps be remembered that, fully aware of the danger he might possibly incur by his ambitious machinations, and knowing from history that the use of poison had often been considered at Rome as a state necessity, Rodin, on being suddenly attacked with the cholera, had exclaimed, with a furious glance at Cardinal Malipieri, “I am poisoned!”