"Yes, the male representative, mademoiselle."
"That alters the question," she said. "Give me your arm, cousin, and tell me your history."
I thought that in the circumstances it would be better not to conceal anything from her. As I finished the painful story of my family troubles, we found ourselves opposite a small house, remarkably low and narrow. On one side stood a kind of low pigeon-house with a pointed roof.
"Enter, marquis," said the daughter of the kings of Gaël at the threshold of her lowly palace. "I beg that you will enter."
The next moment I stepped into a little salon meanly paved with brick; on the faded tapestry of the walls hung portraits of ancestors gorgeous in ducal ermine. Over the mantel-piece sparkled a magnificent clock in tortoise-shell and brass, surmounted by a group representing the chariot of the sun. Some oval-backed arm-chairs and an old spindle-legged couch completed the furniture of the room. Everything shone with cleanliness, and the air was filled with mingled odours of iris, Spanish snuff, and aromatic essences.
"Pray be seated," said the old lady, taking her place on the couch; "pray be seated, my cousin. I call you cousin, though we are not related, and cannot be, as Jeanne de Porhoët and Hugues de Champcey were so ill-advised as to leave no issue. But, with your permission, I should like to treat you as a cousin when we are alone, if only to make me forget for a moment that I am alone in the world.
"So, cousin, I see how you are situated; the case is a hard one, most assuredly. But I will suggest one or two reflections which have solaced me, and which I think are likely to bring consolation to you.
"In the first place, my dear marquis, I often tell myself that among all the charlatans and ex-lackeys one now sees rolling in carriages, poverty has a peculiar perfume of distinction and good taste. And also I am inclined to believe that God has brought some of us down to a poor and narrow life, that this coarse, materialistic, money-grubbing age may have before it the type of a merit, dignity, and splendour which owes nothing to money, that money cannot buy—that is not for sale. In all probability, my cousin, such is the providential justification of your situation and of mine."
I conveyed to Mlle. de Porhoët my satisfaction at having been chosen with her to give the world the noble example it needs so much, and shows itself so ready to profit by.
"For my own part," she went on, "I am inured to privation, and I do not feel it much. When, in the course of a life that has been too long, one has seen a father and four brothers, worthy of their father, perish before their time, by sword or bullet; when one has lost, one by one, all the objects of one's affection and worship, one must have a very paltry soul to be much concerned about more or less ample meals and more or less dainty clothing. Certainly, marquis, you may be sure that if my personal comfort only were at stake, I should not trouble about my Spanish millions; but to me it seems but right and proper and exemplary that a house like mine should not disappear without leaving some permanent sign, some striking monument of its grandeur and its faith. And that is why, cousin, I have, in imitation of some of my ancestors, thought of the pious foundation of which you must have heard, and which, while I have life, I shall not relinquish."