“Not even with the name I bear? Would you beg, M. de Rohan?”
“I do not speak of myself,” said he, with an embarrassment mingled with hauteur.
“Monseigneur, I only know two ways of begging: in a carriage, or at a church door in velvet or in rags. Well, just now, I did not expect the honor of this visit; I thought you had forgotten me.”
“Oh, you knew, then, that it was I who wrote?”
“Were not your arms on the seal?”
“However, you feigned not to know me.”
“Because you did not do me the honor to announce yourself.”
“This pride pleases me,” said the cardinal.
“I had then,” continued Jeanne, “despairing of seeing you, taken the resolution of throwing off all this flimsy parade, which covers my real poverty, and of going in rags, like other mendicants, to beg my bread from the passers-by.”
“You are not at the end of your resources, I trust, madame?”