l ancestor, were to unite their forces to combat and crush our
Society!--There was good reason to fear them; but what did I say? That I
would act upon their passions. What have I done? I have acted upon their
passions. At this hour they are vainly struggling in my web--they are
mine--they are mine--"

As he was speaking, Rodin's countenance and voice had undergone a
singular alteration; his complexion, generally so cadaverous, had become
flushed, but unequally, and in patches; then, strange phenomenon! his
eyes grew both more brilliant and more sunken, and his voice sharper and
louder. The change in the countenance of Rodin, of which he did not
appear to be conscious, was so remarkable, that the other actors in this
scene looked at him with a sort of terror.

Deceived as to the cause of this impression, Rodin exclaimed with
indignation, in a voice interrupted by deep gaspings for breath: "It is
pity for this impious race, that I read upon your faces? Pity for the
young girl, who never enters a church, and erects pagan altars in her
habitation? Pity for Hardy, the sentimental blasphemer, the philanthropic
atheist, who had no chapel in his factory, and dared to blend the names
of Socrates, Marcus, Aurelius, and Plato, with our Savior's? Pity for the
Indian worshipper of Brahma? Pity for the two sisters, who have never
even been baptized? Pity for that brute, Jacques Rennepont? Pity for the
stupid imperial soldier, who has Napoleon for his god, and the bulletins
of the Grand Army for his gospel? Pity for this family of renegades,
whose ancestor, a relapsed heretic, not content with robbing us of our
property, excites from his tomb, at the end of a century and a half, his
cursed race to lift their heads against us? What! to defend ourselves
from these vipers, we shall not have the right to crush them in their own
venom?--I tell you, that it is to serve heaven, and to give a salutary
example to the world, to devote, by unchaining their own passions, this
impious family to grief and despair and death!"

As he spoke thus, Rodin was dreadful in his ferocity; the fire of his
eyes became still more brilliant; his lips were dry and burning, a cold
sweat bathed his temples, which could be seen throbbing; an icy shudder
ran through his frame. Attributing these symptoms to fatigue from writing
through a portion of the night, and wishing to avoid fainting, he went to
the sideboard, filled another glass with wine, which he drank off a