extraordinary, he remained for some time with his head down, and his eyes
fixed--the only mark of joy that he gave being manifested by a loud,
frequent, and prolonged respiration. Men who are as audacious in their
ambition, as they are patient and obstinate in their mining and
countermining, are surprised at their own success, when this latter
precedes and surpasses their wise and prudent expectations. Rodin was now
in this case. Thanks to prodigies of craft, address, and dissimulation,
thanks to mighty promises of corruption, thanks to the singular mixture
of admiration, fear, and confidence, with which his genius inspired many
influential persons, Rodin now learned from members of the pontifical
government, that, in case of a possible and probable occurrence, he
might, within a given time, aspire, with a good chance of success, to a
position which has too often excited the fear, the hate, or the envy of
many sovereigns, and which has in turn, been occupied by great, good men,
by abominable scoundrels, and by persons risen from the lowest grades of
society. But for Rodin to attain this end with certainty, it was
absolutely necessary for him to succeed in that project, which he had
undertaken to accomplish without violence, and only by the play and the
rebound of passions skillfully managed. The project was: To secure for
the Society of Jesus the fortune of the Rennepont family.

This possession would thus have a double and immense result; for Rodin,
acting in accordance with his personal views, intended to make of his
Order (whose chief was at his discretion) a stepping-stone and a means of
intimidation. When his first impression of surprise had passed away--an
impression that was only a sort of modesty of ambition and self
diffidence, not uncommon with men of really superior powers--Rodin looked
more coldly and logically on the matter, and almost reproached himself
for his surprise. But soon after, by a singular contradiction, yielding
to one of those puerile and absurd ideas, by which men are often carried