"You threw away your pen," said Father d'Aigrigny to Rodin with extreme
deference, "while I was dictating a note for Rome. Will you do me the
favor to tell me how I have acted wrong?"

"Directly," replied Rodin, in his sharp, cutting voice. "For a long time
this affair appeared to me above your strength; but I abstained from
interfering. And yet what mistakes! what poverty of invention; what
coarseness in the means employed to bring it to bear!"

"I can hardly understand your reproaches," answered Father d'Aigrigny,
mildly, though a secret bitterness made its way through his apparent
submission. "Was not the success certain, had it not been for this
codicil? Did you not yourself assist in the measures that you now blame?"

"You commanded, then, and it was my duty to obey. Besides, you were just
on the point of succeeding--not because of the means you had taken--but
in spite of those means, with all their awkward and revolting brutality."

"Sir--you are severe," said Father d'Aigrigny.

"I am just. One has to be prodigiously clever, truly, to shut up any one
in a room, and then lock the door! And yet, what else have you done? The
daughters of General Simon?--imprisoned at Leipsic, shut up in a convent
at Paris! Adrienne de Cardoville?--placed in confinement.
Sleepinbuff--put in prison. Djalma?--quieted by a narcotic. One only
ingenious method, and a thousand times safer, because it acted morally,
not materially, was employed to remove M. Hardy. As for your other
proceedings--they were all bad, uncertain, dangerous. Why? Because they
were violent, and violence provokes violence. Then it is no longer a