“I always told you, my dear father, that your old military habits would be fatal to you,” answered Rodin with a frightful smile. “Only a few days ago, I gave you warning, and advised you take a blow patiently from this old swordsman—who seems to have done with that work forever, which is well—for the Scripture says: ‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ And then this Marshal Simon might have had some claim on his daughter’s inheritance. And, between ourselves, my dear father, what was I to do? It was necessary to sacrifice you for the common interest; the rather, that I well knew what you had in pickle for me to-morrow. But I am not so easily caught napping.”
“Before I die,” said Father d’Aigrigny, in a failing voice, “I will unmask you.”
“Oh, no, you will not,” said Rodin, shaking his head with a knowing air; “I alone, if you please, will receive your last confession.”
“Oh! this is horrible,” moaned Father d’Aigrigny, whose eyes were closing. “May God have mercy on me, if it is not too late!—Alas! at this awful moment, I feel that I have been a great sinner—”
“And, above all, a great fool,” said Rodin, shrugging his shoulders, and watching with cold disdain the dying moments of his accomplice.
Father d’Aigrigny had now but a few minutes more to live. Rodin perceived it, and said: “It is time to call for help.” And the Jesuit ran, with an air of alarm and consternation, into the courtyard of the house.
Others came at his cries; but, as he had promised, Rodin had only quitted Father d’Aigrigny as the latter had breathed his last sigh.
That evening, alone in his chamber, by the glimmer of a little lamp, Rodin sat plunged in a sort of ecstatic contemplation, before the print representing Sixtus V. The great house-clock struck twelve. At the last stroke, Rodin drew himself up in all the savage majesty of his infernal triumph, and exclaimed: “This is the first of June. There are no more Renneponts!—Methinks, I hear the hour from the clock of St. Peter’s at Rome striking!”
