“Speak, Sir, I pray you speak,” said Adrienne.
Drawing about him Adrienne, Dagobert, and Mother Bunch, Rodin said to them in a low voce, and with a mysterious air: “Have you never heard of a powerful association, which extends its net over all the earth, and counts its disciples, agents, and fanatics in every class of society which has had, and often has still, the ear of kings and nobles—which, in a word, can raise its creatures to the highest positions, and with a word can reduce them again to the nothingness from which it alone could uplift them?”
“Good heaven, sir!” said Adrienne, “what formidable association? Until now I never heard of it.”
“I believe you; and yet your ignorance on this subject greatly astonishes me, my dear young lady.”
“And why should it astonish you?”
“Because you lived some time with your aunt, and must have often seen the Abbe d’Aigrigny.”
“I lived at the princess’s, but not with her; for a thousand reasons she had inspired me with warrantable aversion.”
“In truth, my dear young lady, my remark was ill-judged. It was there, above all, and particularly in your presence, that they would keep silence with regard to this association—and yet to it alone did the Princess de Saint-Dizier owe her formidable influence in the world, during the last reign. Well, then; know this—it is the aid of that association which renders the Abbe d’Aigrigny so dangerous a man.
“By it he was enabled to follow and to reach divers members of your family, some in Siberia, some in India, others on the heights of the American mountains; but, as I have told you, it was only the day before yesterday, and by chance, that, examining the papers of Abbe d’Aigrigny, I found the trace of his connection with this Company, of which he is the most active and able chief.”
“But the name, sir, the name of this Company?” said Adrienne.