friend!”
“Yes, my friend, yes,” said the cardinal, with that paternal tone which he sometimes knew how to assume, but which deceived none who knew him; “and as you have been unjustly suspected, well, you must be indemnified. Here, take this purse of a hundred pistoles, and pardon me.”
“I pardon you, monseigneur!” said Bonacieux, hesitating to take the purse, fearing, doubtless, that this pretended gift was but a pleasantry. “But you are able to have me arrested, you are able to have me tortured, you are able to have me hanged; you are the master, and I could not have the least word to say. Pardon you, monseigneur! You cannot mean that!”
“Ah, my dear M. Bonacieux, you are generous in this matter. I see it and I thank you for it. Thus, then, you will take this bag, and you will go away without being too malcontent.”
“I go away enchanted.”
“Farewell, then, or rather, au revoir, for I hope we shall meet again.”
“Whenever Monseigneur wishes, I am always at his Eminence’s orders.”
“And that will be frequently, I assure you, for I have found something extremely agreeable in your conversation.”
“Oh! Monseigneur!”
“Au revoir, M. Bonacieux, au revoir.”
And the cardinal made him a sign with his hand, to which Bonacieux replied by bowing to the ground. He then went out backward, and when he was in the antechamber the cardinal heard him, in his enthusiasm,