Do you still
persist in selling your business, in order to devote yourself more entirely
to the practice of religion?"
"Since yesterday, my business is sold, M. l'Abbe; some concessions have
enabled me to realize (a rare thing) the cash down: this sum, added to
others, will enable me to found the institution of which I have spoken, and
of which I have definitively arranged the plan that I am about to submit to
you."
"Ah! my worthy friend," said the abbe, with deep and reverential
admiration, "to do so much good--so unostentatiously--and, I may say, so
naturally! I repeat to you, people like you are rare; they will receive
their reward."
"It is true that very few persons unite, like Jacques Ferrand, riches to
piety, intelligence to charity," said Polidori, with an ironical smile
which escaped the notice of the good abbe.
At this new and sarcastic eulogium the hand of the notary was clinched; he
cast from under his spectacles a look of deadly hatred on Polidori.
"You see, M. l'Abbe," the bosom friend of Jacques Ferrand hastened to say,
"he has continually these nervous spasms, and he will do nothing for them.
He worries me, he is his own executioner, my poor friend!"
At these words of Polidori, the notary shuddered still more convulsively,
but he composed himself again. A man less simple than the abbe would have
remarked, during this conversation, and, above all, during what is about to
follow, the notary's constrained manner of speaking; for it is hardly
necessary to say that a will superior to his own, the will of Rudolph, in a
word, imposed on this man words and acts diametrically opposed to his true
character.
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