n's arrival Father d'Aigrigny had remained silent; he seemed
occupied with bitter thoughts, and with some violent internal struggle.
At last, half rising, he said to the prelate, in a forced tone of voice:
"I will not ask your Eminence to judge between the reverend Father Rodin
and myself. Our General has pronounced, and I have obeyed. But, as your
Eminence will soon see our superior, I should wish that you would grant
me the favor to report faithfully the answers of Father Rodin to one or
two questions I am about to put to him."

The prelate bowed. Rodin looked at Father d'Aigrigny with an air of
surprise, and said to him, dryly: "The thing is decided. What is the use
of questions?"

"Not to justify myself," answered Father d'Aigrigny, "but to place
matters in their true light before his Eminence."

"Speak, then; but let us have no useless speeches," said Rodin, drawing
out his large silver watch, and looking at it. "By two o'clock I must be
at Saint-Sulpice."

"I will be as brief as possible," said Father d'Aigrigny, with repressed
resentment. Then, addressing Rodin, he resumed: "When your reverence
thought fit to take my place, and to blame, very severely perhaps,
the manner in which I had managed the interests confided to my care, I
confess honestly that these interests were gravely compromised."

"Compromised?" said Rodin, ironically; "you mean lost. Did you not order
me to write to Rome, to bid them renounce all hope?"

"That is true," said Father d'Aigrigny.

"It was then a desperate case, given up by the best doctors," continued
Rodin, with irony, "and yet I have undertaken to restore it to life. Go
on."

And, plunging both hands into the pockets of his trousers, he looked
Father d'Aigrigny full in the face.

"Your reverence blamed me harshly," resumed Father d'Aigrigny, "not for
having sought, by every possible means, to recover the property odiously
diverted from our society--"

"All your casuists authorize you to do so," said the cardinal; "the
texts are clear and positive; you have a right to recover; per fas aut
nefas what has been treacherously taken from you."

"And therefore," resumed Father d'Aigrigny, "Father Rodin only
reproached me with the military roughness of my means. 'Their violence,'
he said, 'was in dangerous opposition to the manners of the age.' Be it
so; but first of all, I could not be exposed to any legal proceedings,
and, but for one fatal circumstance, success would have cr