Rodin would not allow them to change his linen. His iron-gray beard had
not been shaved for some time, and stood out like the hairs of a brush.
Under his shirt he wore an old flannel waistcoat full of holes. He had
one of his arms out of bed, and his bony hairy hand, with its bluish
nails, held fast a cotton handkerchief of indescribable color.

You might have taken him for a corpse, had it not been for the two
brilliant sparks which still burned in the depths of his eyes. In that
look, in which seemed concentrated all the remaining life and energy
of the man, you might read the most restless anxiety. Sometimes his
features revealed the sharpest pangs; sometimes the twisting of his
hands, and his sudden starts, proclaimed his despair at being thus
fettered to a bed of pain, whilst the serious interests which he had
in charge required all the activity of his mind. Thus, with thoughts
continually on the stretch, his mind often wandered, and he had fits
of delirium, from which he woke as from a painful dream. By the prudent
advice of Dr. Baleinier, who considered him not in a state to attend to
matters of--importance, Father d'Aigrigny had hitherto evaded Rodin's
questions with regard to the Rennepont affair, which he dreaded to see
lost and ruined in consequence of his forced inaction. The silence of
Father d'Aigrigny on this head, and the ignorance in which they kept
him, only augmented the sick man's exasperation. Such was the moral and
physical state of Rodin, when Cardinal Malipieri entered his chamber
against his will.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE LURE.

To understand fully the tortures of Rodin, reduced to inactivity by
sickness, and to explain the importance of Cardinal Malipieri's visit,
we must remember the audacious views of the ambitious Jesuit, who
believed himself following in the steps of Sixtus V., and expected to
become his equal. By the success of the Rennepont affair, to attain to
the generalship of his Order, by the corruption of the Sacred College
to ascend the pontifical throne, and then, by means of a change in the
statutes of the Company, to incorporate the Society of Jesus with the
Holy See, instead of leaving it independent, to equal and almost always
rule the Papacy--such were the secret projects of Rodin.

Their possibility was sanctioned by numerous precedents, for many mere
monks and priests had been suddenly raised to the pontifical dignity.
And as for their morality, the accession of the Bor