In turn, he contemplated it in silence, even as his master had done.

Then, bending over it, and embracing it, as it were, in his arms, he gloated with his reptile-eye on it for some moments, drew his coarse finger along its polished surface, and tapped his flat, dirty nail on three of the places dotted with red crosses.

And, whilst he thus pointed to three towns, in very different parts of the world, he named them aloud, with a sneer.
"Leipsic--Charlestown--Batavia." "In each of these three places," he added, "distant as they are from one another, there exist persons who little think that here, in this obscure street, from the recesses of this chamber, wakeful eyes are upon them--that all their movements are followed, all their actions known--and that hence will issue new instructions, which deeply concern them, and which will be inexorably executed; for an interest is at stake, which may have a powerful influence on Europe--on the world.
Luckily, we have friends at Leipsic, Charlestown, and Batavia." This funny, old, sordid, ill-dressed man, with his livid and death-like countenance, thus crawling over the sphere before him, appeared still more awful than his master, when the latter, erect and haughty, had imperiously laid his hand upon that globe, which he seemed desirous of subjecting by the strength of his pride and courage.

The one resembled the eagle, that hovers above his prey--the other the reptile, that envelops its victim in its inextricable folds.
After some minutes, Rodin approached his desk, rubbing his hands briskly together, and wrote the following epistle in a cipher unknown even to his master: "Paris, 3/4 past 9 A.M.
"He is gone--but he hesitated! "When he received the order, his dying mother had just summoned him to her.

He might, they told him, save her by his presence; and he exclaimed: 'Not to go to my mother would be matricide!' "Still, he is gone--but he hesitated.