elate, and looked at him
fixedly in a strange manner, for about a second; then, strong in his
unconquerable energy, notwithstanding the change in his features, which
were now visibly disfigured, Rodin said, in a broken voice, which he
tried to make firm: "The fire has warmed me; it will be nothing. I have
no time to coddle myself. It would be a pretty thing to fall ill just as
the Rennepont affair can only succeed by my exertions! Let us return to
business. I told you, Father d'Aigrigny, that you might serve us a good
deal; and you also, princess, who have espoused this cause as if it were
your own--"

Rodin again paused. This time he uttered a piercing cry, sank upon
a chair placed near him, and throwing himself back convulsively, he
pressed his hands to his chest, and exclaimed: "Oh! what pain!"

Then (dreadful sight!) a cadaverous decomposition, rapid as thought,
took place in Rodin's features. His hollow eyes were filled with blood,
and seemed to shrink back in their orbits, which formed, as it were,
two dark holes, in the centre of which blazed points of fire; nervous
convulsions drew the flabby, damp, and icy skin tight over the bony
prominences of the face, which was becoming rapidly green. From the
lips, writhing with pain, issued the struggling breath, mingled with the
words: "Oh! I suffer! I burn!"

Then, yielding to a transport of fury. Rodin tore with his nails his
naked chest, for he had twisted off the buttons of his waistcoat, and
rent his black and filthy shirt-front, as if the pressure of those
garments augmented the violence of the pain under which he was writhing.
The bishop, the cardinal, and Father d'Aigrigny, hastily approached
Rodin, to try and hold him; he was seized with horrible convulsions;
but, suddenly, collecting all his strength, he rose upon his feet stiff
as a corpse. Then, with his garments in disorder, his thin, gray hair
standing up all around his greenish face, fixing his red and flaming
eyes upon the cardinal, he seized him with convulsive grasp, and
exclaimed in a terrible voice, half stifled in his throat: "Cardinal
Malipieri--this illness is too sudden--they suspect me at Rome--you
are of the race of the Borgias--and your secretary was with me this
morning!"

"Unhappy man! what does he dare insinuate?" cried the prelate, as amazed
as he was indignant at the accusation. So saying, the cardinal strove to
free himself from the grasp of Rodin, whose fingers were now as stiff as