The cardinal approached her, and said, “It is impossible but that before long all must interest themselves in you.”
“Alas! monseigneur,” said Jeanne, with a sigh, “do you think so?”
“I fear you flatter me,” she said, looking earnestly at him, for she could hardly believe in his sudden change of manner, he had been so cold and suspicious at first.
This look had no small effect on the cardinal; he began to think he had never met a woman prettier or more attractive. “Ah, ma foi!” said he to himself, with the eternally scheming spirit of a man used to diplomacy, “it would be too extraordinary and too fortunate if I have met at once an honest woman with the attractions of a scheming one, and found in this poverty an able coadjutrix to my desires.”
“Monseigneur, the silence you keep every now and then disquiets me.”
“Because a man like you only fails in politeness to two kinds of women.”
“Mon Dieu! countess, you frighten me. What are you about to say?” and he took her hand.
“I repeat it,” said she, “with women that you love too much, or with women whom you do not esteem enough to be polite to.”
“Countess, you make me blush. Have I, then, failed in politeness towards you?”
“Rather so, monseigneur; and yet you cannot love me too much, and I have given you no cause to despise me.”
“Oh, countess, you speak as if you were angry with me.”
“No, monseigneur; you have not yet merited my anger.”
“And I never will, madame. From this day, in which I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, my solicitude for you will not cease.”
“Oh, sir, do not speak to me of your protection.”
“Oh, mon Dieu! I should humiliate myself, not you, in mentioning such a thing;” and he pressed her hand, which he continued to hold, to his lips.
She tried to withdraw it; but he said, “Only politeness, madame,” and she let it remain.
“To know,” said she, “that I shall occupy a place, however small, in the mind of a man so eminent and so busy, would console me for a year.”
“Let us hope the consolation will last longer than that, countess.”
“Well, perhaps so, monseigneur; I have confidence in you, because I feel that you are capable of appreciating a mind like mine, adventurous, brave, and pure, in spite of my poverty, and of the enemies which my position has made me. Your eminence will, I am sure, discover all the good that is in me, and be indulgent to all the rest.”