Here it is: `Father d'Aigrigny has excellent qualities. He will be of
much service to me'--and from to-morrow I shall employ you very actively,
added Rodin, by way of parenthesis--`but he is not great enough to know
how to make himself little on occasion.' Do you understand?"

"Not very well," said Father d'Aigrigny, blushing.

"So much the worse for you," answered Rodin; "it only proves that I was
right. Well, since I must tell you, I have been wise enough to play the
most foolish part for six whole weeks. Yes, I have chatted nonsense with
a grisette--have talked of liberty, progress, humanity, emancipation of
women, with a young, excited girl; of Napoleon the Great, and all sorts
of Bonapartist idolatry, with an old, imbecile soldier; of imperial
glory, humiliation of France, hopes in the King of Rome, with a certain
marshal of France, who, with a heart full of adoration for the robber of
thrones, that was transported to Saint-Helena, has a head as hollow and
sonorous as a trumpet, into which you have only to blow some warlike or
patriotic notes, and it will flourish away of itself, without knowing why
or how. More than all this, I have talked of love affairs with a young
tiger. When I told you it was lamentable to see a man of any intelligence
descend, as I have done, to all such petty ways of connecting the
thousand threads of this dark web, was I not right? Is it not a fine
spectacle to see the spider obstinately weaving its net?--to see the ugly
little black animal crossing thread upon thread, fastening it here,
strengthening it there, and again lengthening it in some other place? You
shrug your shoulders in pity; but return two hours after--what will you
find? The little black animal eating its fill, and in its web a dozen of
the foolish flies, bound so securely, that the little black animal has
only to choose the moment of its repast."