“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.
[Original]
“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 crowned the course I had taken, however rough and brutal it may appear. Now, may I ask your reverence what—”
“What I have done more than you?” said Rodin to Father d’Aigrigny, giving way to his impertinent habit of interrupting people; “what I have done better than you?—what step I have taken in the Rennepont affair, since I received it from you in a desperate condition? Is that what you wish to know?”
“Precisely,” said Father d’Aigrigny, dryly.
“Well, I confess,” resumed Rodin, in a sardonic tone, “just as you did great things, coarse things, turbulent things, I have been doing little, puerile, secret things. Oh, heaven! you cannot imagine what a foolish part I, who passed for a man of enlarged views, have been acting for the last six weeks.”