ected joy may perhaps cure me. Yes--I
scarce know what I feel--but look at my cheeks--it seems to me, that,
for the first time since I have been stretched on this bed of pain, they
are a little warm."

Rodin spoke the truth. A slight color appeared suddenly on his livid and
icy cheeks; his voice though still very weak, became less tremulous, and
he exclaimed, in a tone of conviction that startled Father d'Aigrigny
and the prelate, "This first success answers for the others. I read the
future. Yes, yes; our cause will triumph. Every member of the execrable
Rennepont family will be crushed--and that soon you will see--"

Then, pausing, Rodin threw himself back on the pillow, exclaiming: "Oh!
I am choked with joy. My voice fails me."

"But what is it?" asked the cardinal of Father d'Aigrigny.

The latter replied, in a tone of hypocritical sanctity: "One of the
heirs of the Rennepont family, a poor fellow, worn out with excesses and
debauchery, died three days ago, at the close of some abominable
orgies, in which he had braved the cholera with sacrilegious impiety.
In consequence of the indisposition that kept me at home, and of another
circumstance, I only received to-day the certificate of the death of
this victim of intemperance and irreligion. I must proclaim it to the
praise of his reverence"--pointing to Rodin--"that he told me, the worst
enemies of the descendants of that infamous renegade would be their own
bad passions, and that the might look to them as our allies against the
whole impious race. And so it has happened with Jacques Rennepont."

"You see," said Rodin, in so faint a voice that it was almost
unintelligible, "the punishment begins already. One of the Renneponts
is dead--and believe me--this certificate," and he pointed to the paper
that Father d'Aigrigny held in his hand, "will one day be worth forty
millions to the Society of Jesus--and that--because--"

The lips alone finished the sentence. During some seconds, Rodin's
voice had become so faint, that it was at last quite imperceptible. His
larynx, contracted by violent emotion, no longer emitted any sound.
The Jesuit, far from being disconcerted by this incident, finished his
phrase, as it were, by expressive pantomime. Raising his head proudly he
tapped his forehead with his forefinger, as if to express that it was to
his ability this first success was owing. But he soon fell back again
on the bed, exhausted, breathless, sinking, with his cotto