performances."

"How so?"

"A dramatic agent, passing through Lyons, engaged him and his menagerie
for the Port Saint-Martin Theatre at a very high price. He says that he
did not like to refuse such an offer."

"Well," said Father d'Aigrigny, shrugging his shoulders, "but by
distributing his little books, and selling prints and chaplets, as
well as by the influence he would certainly exercise over the pious and
ignorant people of the South or of Brittany, he might render services,
such as he can never perform in Paris."

"He is now below, with a kind of giant, who travels about with him. In
his capacity of your reverence's old servant, Morok hoped to have the
honor of kissing your hand this evening."

"Impossible--impossible--you know how much I am occupied. Have you sent
to the Rue Saint-Francois?"

"Yes, I have. The old Jew guardian has had notice from the notary. To
morrow, at six in the morning, the masons will unwall the door, and,
for the first time since one hundred and fifty years, the house will be
opened."

Father d'Aigrigny remained in thought for a moment, and then said to
Rodin: "On the eve of such a decisive day, we must neglect nothing,
and call every circumstance to memory. Read me the copy of the note,
inserted in the archives of the society, a century and a half ago, on
the subject of Rennepont."

The secretary took the note from the case, and read as follows:

"'This 19th day of February, 1682, the Reverend Father-Provincial
Alexander Bourdon sent the following advice, with these words in the
margin: Of extreme importance for the future.

"'We have just discovered, by the confession of a dying person to one of
our fathers, a very close secret.

"'Marius de Rennepont, one of the most active and redoubtable partisans
of the Reformed Religion, and one of the most determined enemies of our
Holy Society, had apparently re-entered the pale of our Mother Church,
but with the sole design of saving his worldly goods, threatened with
confiscation because of his irreligious and damnable errors. Evidence
having been furnished by different persons of our company to prove that
the conversion of Rennepont was not sincere, and in reality covered a
sacrilegious lure, the possessions of the said gentleman, now considered
a relapsed heretic, were confiscated by our gracious sovereign, his
Majesty King Louis XIV, and the said Rennepont was condemned to the
galleys for life.(12) He escaped his doom by a vol