necessarily left in a confession made during delirium.'
Rodin, recovered from his first surprise, perceived, but too late, that he had fallen into a snare, not by any words he had spoken, but by his too significant movements. In fact, the Jesuit had feared for a moment that he might have betrayed himself during his delirium, when he heard himself accused of dark intrigues with Rome; but, after some minutes of reflection, his common sense suggested: 'If this crafty Roman knew my secret, he would take care not to tell me so. He has only suspicions, confirmed by my involuntary start just now.'
Rodin wiped the cold sweat from his burning forehead. The emotion of this scene augmented his sufferings, and aggravated the danger of his condition. Worn out with fatigue, he could not remain long in a sitting posture, and soon fell back upon the bed.
'Per Bacco!' said the cardinal to himself, alarmed at the expression of the Jesuit's face; 'if he were to die before he had spoken, and so escape the snare!'
Then, leaning over the bed, the prelate asked: 'What is the matter, my very dear father?'
'I am weak, my lord—I am in pain—I cannot express what I suffer.'
'Let us hope, my very dear father, that this crisis will have no fatal results; but the contrary may happen, and it behooves the salvation of your soul to make instantly the fullest confession. Were it even to exhaust your strength, what is this perishable body compared to eternal life?'
'Of what confession do you speak, my lord?' said Rodin, in a feeble and yet sarcastic tone.
'What confession!' cried the amazed cardinal; 'why, with regard to your dangerous intrigues at Rome.'
'What intrigues?' asked Rodin.
'The intrigues you revealed during your delirium,' replied the prelate, with still more angry impatience. 'Were not your avowals sufficiently explicit? Why, then, this culpable hesitation to complete them?'
'My avowals—were explicit—you assure me?' said Rodin, pausing after each word for want of breath, but without losing his energy and presence of mind.
'Yes, I repeat it,' resumed the cardinal; 'with the exception of a few chasms, they were most explicit.'
'Then why repeat them?' said Rodin, with the same sardonic smile on his violet lips.
'Why repeat them?' cried the angry prelate. 'In order to gain pardon; for if there is indulgence and mercy for the repentant sinner, there must be condemnation and curses for the hardened criminal!'
'Oh, what torture! I am dying by slow fire!' murmured Rodin. 'Since I have told all,' he resumed, 'I have nothing more to tell. You know it already.'
'I know all—doubtless, I know all,' replied the prelate, in a voice of thunder; 'but how have I learned it? By confessions made in a state of unconsciousness. Do you think they will avail you anything? No; the moment is solemn—death is at hand, tremble to die with a sacrilegious falsehood on your lips,' cried the prelate, shaking Rodin violently by the arm; 'dread the eternal flames, if you dare deny what you know to be the truth. Do you deny it?'
'I deny nothing,' murmured Rodin, with difficulty. 'Only leave me alone!'
'Then heaven inspires you,' said the cardinal, with a sigh of satisfaction; and, thinking he had nearly attained his object, he resumed, 'Listen to the divine word, that will guide you, father. You deny nothing?'
'I was—delirious—and cannot—(oh! how I suffer!)' added Rodin, by way of parenthesis; 'and cannot therefore—deny—the nonsense—I may have uttered!'
'But when this nonsense agrees with the truth,' cried the prelate, furious at being again deceived in his expectation; 'but when raving is an involuntary, providential revelation—'
'Cardinal Malipieri—your craft is no match—for my agony,' answered Rodin, in a failing voice. 'The proof—that I have not told my secret—if I have a secret—is—that you want to make me tell it!' In spite of his pain and weakness, the Jesuit had courage to raise himself in the bed, and look the cardinal full in the face, with a smile of bitter irony. After which he fell back on the pillow, and pressed his hands to his chest, with a long sigh of anguish.
'Damnation! the infernal Jesuit has found me out!' said the cardinal to himself, as he stamped his foot with rage. 'He sees that he was compromised by his first movement; he is now upon his guard; I shall get nothing more from him—unless indeed, profiting by the state of weakness in which he is, I can, by entreaties, by threats, by terror—'
The prelate was unable to finish. The door opened abruptly, and Father d'Aigrigny entered the room, exclaiming with an explosion of joy: 'Excellent news!'
CHAPTER XXVIII. GOOD NEWS.
By the alteration in the countenance of Father d'Aigrigny, his pale cheek, and the feebleness of his walk, one might see that the terrible scene in the square of Notre-Dame, had violently reacted upon his health. Yet his face was radiant and triumphant, as he entered Rodin's chamber, exclaiming: 'Excellent news!'
On these words, Rodin started. In spite of his weakness, he raised his head, and his eyes shone with a curious, uneasy, piercing expression. With his lean hand, he beckoned Father d'Aigrigny to approach the bed, and said to him, in a broken voice, so weak that it was scarcely audible: 'I am very ill—the cardinal has nearly finished me—but if this excellent news—relates to the Rennepont affair—of which I hear nothing—it might save me yet!'
'Be saved then!' cried Father d'Aigrigny, forgetting the recommendations of Dr. Baleinier; 'read, rejoice! What you foretold is beginning to be realized!'
So saying, he drew a paper from his pocket, and delivered it to Rodin, who seized it with an eager and trembling hand. Some minutes before, Rodin would have been really incapable of continuing his conversation with the cardinal, even if prudence had allowed him to do so; nor could he have read a single line, so dim had his sight become. But, at the words of Father d'Aigrigny, he felt such a renewal of hope and vigor, that, by a mighty effort of energy and will, he rose to a sitting posture, and, with clear head, and look of intelligent animation, he read rapidly the paper that Father d'Aigrigny had just delivered to him.
The cardinal, amazed at this sudden transfiguration, asked himself if he beheld the same man, who, a few minutes before, had fallen back on his bed, almost insensible. Hardly had Rodin finished reading, than he uttered a cry of stifled joy, saying, with an accent impossible to describe: 'ONE gone! it works—'tis well!' And, closing his eyes in a kind of ecstatic transport, a smile of proud triumph overspread his face, and rendered him still more hideous, by discovering his yellow and gumless teeth. His emotion was so violent, that the paper fell from his trembling hand.
'He has fainted,' cried Father d'Aigrigny, with uneasiness, as he leaned over Rodin. 'It is my fault, I forgot that the doctor cautioned me not to talk to him of serious matters.'
'No; do not reproach yourself,' said Rodin, in a low voice, half-raising himself in the bed. 'This unexpected 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
