three months are over, the most dangerous members of
this family of the Renneponts should come to implore, upon their knees,
admission to that very Society which they now hold in horror, and from
which Gabriel has just separated?"

"Such a conversion is impossible," cried Father d'Aigrigny.

"Impossible? What were you, sir, fifteen years ago?" said Rodin. "An
impious and debauched man of the world. And yet you came to us, and your
wealth became ours. What! we have conquered princes, kings, popes; we
have absorbed and extinguished in our unity magnificent intelligences,
which, from afar, shone with too dazzling a light; we have all but
governed two worlds; we have perpetuated our Society, full of life,
rich and formidable, even to this day, through all the hate, and all the
persecutions that have assailed us; and yet we shall not be able to
get the better of a single family, which threatens our Company, and has
despoiled us of a large fortune? What! we are not skillful enough to
obtain this result without having recourse to awkward and dangerous
violence? You do not know, then, the immense field that is thrown
open by the mutually destructive power of human passions, skillfully
combined, opposed, restrained, excited?--particularly," added Rodin,
with a strange smile, "when, thanks to a powerful ally, these passions
are sure to be redoubled in ardor and energy."

"What ally?" asked Father d'Aigrigny, who, as well as the Princess de
Saint-Dizier, felt a sort of admiration mixed with terror.

"Yes," resumed Rodin, without answering the reverend father; "this
formidable ally, who comes to our assistance, may bring about the most
astonishing transformations--make the coward brave, and the impious
credulous, and the gentle ferocious--"

"But this ally!" cried the Princess, oppressed with a vague sense of
fear. "This great and formidable ally--who is he?"

"If he comes," resumed Rodin, still impassible, "the youngest and most
vigorous, every moment in danger of death, will have no advantage over
the sick man at his last gasp."

"But who is this ally?" exclaimed Father d'Aigrigny, more and more
alarmed, for as the picture became darker, Rodin's face become more
cadaverous.

"This ally, who can decimate a population, may carry away with him in
the shroud that he drags at his heels, the whole of an accursed race;
but even he must respect the life of that great intangible body, which
does not perish with the death of its m