owned the
course I had taken, however rough and brutal it may appear. Now, may I
ask your reverence what--"

"What I have done more than you?" said Rodin to Father d'Aigrigny,
giving way to his impertinent habit of interrupting people; "what I have
done better than you?--what step I have taken in the Rennepont affair,
since I received it from you in a desperate condition? Is that what you
wish to know?"

"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