d louder. The change in the countenance of Rodin, of which he did not
appear to be conscious, was so remarkable, that the other actors in this
scene looked at him with a sort of terror.

Deceived as to the cause of this impression, Rodin exclaimed with
indignation, in a voice interrupted by deep gaspings for breath: "It is
pity for this impious race, that I read upon your faces? Pity for the
young girl, who never enters a church, and erects pagan altars in
her habitation? Pity for Hardy, the sentimental blasphemer, the
philanthropic atheist, who had no chapel in his factory, and dared
to blend the names of Socrates, Marcus, Aurelius, and Plato, with our
Savior's? Pity for the Indian worshipper of Brahma? Pity for the two
sisters, who have never even been baptized? Pity for that brute, Jacques
Rennepont? Pity for the stupid imperial soldier, who has Napoleon for
his god, and the bulletins of the Grand Army for his gospel? Pity
for this family of renegades, whose ancestor, a relapsed heretic, not
content with robbing us of our property, excites from his tomb, at the
end of a century and a half, his cursed race to lift their heads against
us? What! to defend ourselves from these vipers, we shall not have the
right to crush them in their own venom?--I tell you, that it is to
serve heaven, and to give a salutary example to the world, to devote, by
unchaining their own passions, this impious family to grief and despair
and death!"

As he spoke thus, Rodin was dreadful in his ferocity; the fire of his
eyes became still more brilliant; his lips were dry and burning, a cold
sweat bathed his temples, which could be seen throbbing; an icy shudder
ran through his frame. Attributing these symptoms to fatigue from
writing through a portion of the night, and wishing to avoid fainting,
he went to the sideboard, filled another glass with wine, which he drank
off at a draught, and returned as the cardinal said to him: "If your
course with regard to this family needed justification, my good father,
your last word would have victoriously justified it. Not only are you
right, according to your own casuists, but there is nothing in your
proceedings contrary to human laws. As for the divine law, it is
pleasing to the Lord to destroy impiety with its own weapons."

Conquered, as well as the others, by Rodin's diabolical assurance, and
brought back to a kind of fearful admiration, Father d'Aigrigny said to
him: "I confess I was wrong in doubt