Then, leaning over the bed, the prelate asked: "What is the matter, my very dear father?"
"I am weak, my lord--I am in pain--I cannot express what I suffer."
"Let us hope, my very dear father, that this crisis will have no fatal results; but the contrary may happen, and it behooves the salvation of your soul to make instantly the fullest confession.Were it even to exhaust your strength, what is this perishable body compared to eternal life?"
"Of what confession do you speak, my lord?" said Rodin, in a feeble and yet sarcastic tone.
"What confession!" cried the amazed cardinal; "why, with regard to your dangerous intrigues at Rome."
"What intrigues?" asked Rodin.
"The intrigues you revealed during your delirium," replied the prelate, with still more angry impatience."Were not your avowals sufficiently explicit? Why, then, this culpable hesitation to complete them?"
"My avowals--were explicit--you assure me?" said Rodin, pausing after each word for want of breath, but without losing his energy and presence of mind.
"Yes, I repeat it," resumed the cardinal; "with the exception of a few chasms, they were most explicit."
"Then why repeat them?" said Rodin, with the same sardonic smile on his violet lips.
"Why repeat them?" cried the angry prelate."In order to gain pardon;
for if there is indulgence and mercy for the repentant sinner, there must be condemnation and curses for the hardened criminal!"
"Oh, what torture! I am dying by slow fire!" murmured Rodin."Since I have told all," he resumed, " I have nothing more to tell.You know it already."
"I know all--doubtless, I know all," replied the prelate, in a voice of thunder; "but how have I learned it? By confessions made in a state of unconsciousness.Do you think they will avail you anything? No; the moment is solemn--death is at hand, tremble to die with a sacrilegious falsehood on your lips," cried the prelate, shaking Rodin violently by the arm; "dread the eternal flames, if you dare deny what you know to be the truth.Do you deny it?"
"I deny nothing," murmured Rodin, with difficulty."Only leave me alone!"
"Then heaven inspires you," said the cardinal, with a sigh of satisfaction; and, thinking he had nearly attained his object, he resumed, "Listen to the divine word, that will guide you, father.You deny nothing?"
"I was--delirious--and cannot--(oh! how I suffer!)" added Rodin, by way of parenthesis; "and cannot therefore--deny--the nonsense--I may have uttered!"
"But when this nonsense agrees with the truth," cried the prelate, furious at being again deceived in his expectation; "but when raving is an involuntary, providential revelation--"
"Cardinal Malipieri--your craft is no match--for my agony," answered Rodin, in a failing voice."The proof--that I have not told my secret--
if I have a secret--is--that you want to make me tell it!" In spite of his pain and weakness, the Jesuit had courage to raise himself in the bed, and look the cardinal full in the face, with a smile of bitter irony.After which he fell back on the pillow, and pressed his hands to his chest, with a long sigh of anguish.
"Damnation! the infernal Jesuit has found me out!" said the cardinal to himself, as he stamped his foot with rage."He sees that he was compromised by his first movement; he is now upon his guard; I shall get nothing more from him--unless indeed, profiting by the state of weakness in which he is, I can, by entreaties, by threats, by terror--"
The prelate was unable to finish.The door opened abruptly, and Father d'Aigrigny entered the room, exclaiming with an explosion of joy:
"Excellent news!"