"Do you live in the Marais? What a horrible neighborhood!"
"Oh, no! however, one lives where one can! I have not, as you have, anonymous admirers who make me an allowance; but I congratulate you; you can still gratify your taste for pleasure, for fine clothes. I consider you very rich now—compared with myself."
"No, indeed! no, indeed!" Madame de Grangeville replied eagerly, with an embarrassed air. "I have only what I need to live; a woman requires so many things, you know; it would be impossible for me to accommodate anybody."
Roncherolle put on his hat, leaned on his cane and exclaimed with a savage glance at the baroness:
"Did you suppose by any chance, madame, that I intended to ask you for anything, or to borrow anything of you? I hoped that you had lived with me long enough to know me. I have spent a devilish lot of money on women; they have led me into all sorts of folly, but nothing base. I have ruined myself for them, and I had a right to do it. I have made love to them much, loved them sometimes, deceived them often; but thank God! I have never accepted anything from them; I am entitled to say to them just what I think, and I avail myself of that right on occasion.—My respects, my affectionate friend!"
With these words, Roncherolle bowed to Madame de Grangeville with a mocking expression, and left her apartment, saying to himself:
"Ah! these women whose lives have been nothing but coquetry—when you search their hearts, what a barren soil you find! Sow benefactions there and you never reap anything but ingratitude."
As for Madame de Grangeville, as soon as her former lover had left her, she called her maid and said:
"If by any chance that gentleman should come again to see me, Lizida, I shall not be at home to him! The idea! a ruined man, who dresses shabbily, who drags one leg, and who has nothing but disagreeable things to say!"
"Madame is quite right. That is a good sort of man to keep out."