After listening in silence to Mdlle. de Cardoville Rodin continued, with a grave and agitated air: "Your blindness frightens me, my dear, young lady; the past should have given you some anxiety for the future, since, more than any one, you have already suffered from the fatal influence of this Company, whose existence you regard as a dream!"
"I, sir?" said Adrienne, with a smile, although a little surprised.
"You."
"Under what circumstances?"
"You ask me this question! my dear young lady! you ask me this question!—and yet you have been confined here as a mad person! Is it not enough to tell you that the master of this house is one of the most devoted lay members of the Company, and therefore the blind instrument of the Abbe d'Aigrigny?"
"So," said Adrienne, this time without smiling, "Dr. Baleinier"
"Obeyed the Abbe d'Aigrigny, the most formidable chief of that formidable society. He employs his genius for evil; but I must confess he is a man of genius. Therefore, it is upon him that you and yours must fix all your doubts and suspicions; it is against him that you must be upon your guard. For, believe me, I know him, and he does not look upon the game as lost. You must be prepared for new attacks, doubtless of another kind, but only the more dangerous on that account—"
"Luckily, you give us notice," said Dagobert, "and you will be on our side."
"I can do very little, my good friends; but that little is at the service of honest people," said Rodin.
"Now," said Adrienne, with a thoughtful air, completely persuaded by Rodin's air of conviction, "I can explain the inconceivable influence that my aunt exercised in the world. I ascribed it chiefly to her relations with persons in power; I thought that she, like the Abbe d'Aigrigny, was concerned in dark intrigues, for which religion served as a veil—but I was far from believing what you tell me."