When, to use the consecrated expression, the stove began to draw, Rodin
spread out the handkerchiefs, which served him for curtains; then,
thinking himself quite safe from every eye, he took from the side-pocket
of his great-coat the letter that Mother Arsene had given him. In doing
so, he brought out several papers and different articles; one of these
papers, folded into a thick and rumpled packet, fell upon the table, and
flew open. It contained a silver cross of the Legion of Honor, black with
time. The red ribbon of this cross had almost entirely lost its original
color. At sight of this cross, which he replaced in his pocket with the
medal of which Faringhea had despoiled Djalma, Rodin shrugged his
shoulders with a contemptuous and sardonic air; then, producing his large
silver watch, he laid it on the table by the side of the letter from
Rome. He looked at this letter with a singular mixture of suspicion and
hope, of fear, and impatient curiosity. After a moment's reflection, he
prepared to unseal the envelope; but suddenly he threw it down again upon
the table, as if, by a strange caprice, he had wished to prolong for a
few minutes that agony of uncertainty, as poignant and irritating as the
emotion of the gambler.

Looking at his watch, Rodin resolved not to open the letter, until the
hand should mark half-past nine, of which it still wanted seven minutes.
In one of those whims of puerile fatalism, from which great minds have
not been exempt, Rodin said to himself: "I burn with impatience to open
this letter. If I do not open it till half-past nine, the news will he
favorable." To employ these minutes, Rodin took several turns up and down
the room, and stood in admiring contemplation before two old prints,
stained with damp and age, and fastened to the wall by rusty nails. The
first of these works of art--the only ornaments with which Rodin had
decorated this hole--was one of those coarse pictures, illuminated with