“This rescript of our very reverend and excellent General will inform you, my clear father.”
Caboccini drew from his pocket-book a folded paper, with three seals, which he kissed respectfully, and delivered to Rodin, who himself kissed it in his turn, and opened it with visible anxiety. While he read it the countenance of the Jesuit remained impassible, but the pulsation of the arteries on his temples announced his internal agitation. Yet he put the letter coolly into his pocket, and looking at the Roman, said to him, “Be it as our excellent General has commanded!”
“Then, father,” cried Caboccini, with a new effusion of tenderness and admiration, “I shall be the shadow of your light, and, in fact, your second self. I shall have the happiness of being always with you, day and night, and of acting as your socius, since, after having allowed you to be without one for some time, according to your wish, and for the interest of our blessed Company, our excellent General now thinks fit to send me from Rome, to fill that post about your person—an unexpected, an immense favor, which fills me with gratitude to our General, and with love to you, my dear, my excellent father!”
“It is well played,” thought Rodin; “but I am not so soft, and ‘tis only among the blind that your Cyclops are kings!”
The evening of the day in which this scene took place between the Jesuit and his new socius, Ninny Moulin, after receiving in presence of Caboccini the instructions of Rodin, went straight to Madame de la Sainte-Colombe’s.
This woman had made her fortune, at the time of the allies taking Paris, by keeping one of those “pretty milliner’s shops,” whose “pink bonnets” have run into a proverb not extinct in these days when bonnets are not known. Ninny Moulin had no better well to draw inspiration from when, as now, he had to find out, as per Rodin’s order, a girl of an age and appearance which, singularly enough, were closely resembling those of Mdlle. de Cardoville.
No doubt of Ninny Moulin’s success in this mission, for the next morning Rodin, whose countenance wore a triumphant expression, put with his own hand a letter into the post.
This letter was addressed:
“To M. Agricola Baudoin, “No. 2, Rue Brise-Miche, “Paris.”