. Your Eminence is right. I told my wife
several times that it was surprising that linen drapers should live
in such houses as those, in houses that had no signs; but she always
laughed at me. Ah, monseigneur!" continued Bonacieux, throwing himself
at his Eminence's feet, "ah, how truly you are the cardinal, the great
cardinal, the man of genius whom all the world reveres!"

The cardinal, however contemptible might be the triumph gained over so
vulgar a being as Bonacieux, did not the less enjoy it for an instant;
then, almost immediately, as if a fresh thought has occurred, a smile
played upon his lips, and he said, offering his hand to the mercer,
"Rise, my friend, you are a worthy man."

"The cardinal has touched me with his hand! I have touched the hand
of the great man!" cried Bonacieux. "The great man has called me his
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 Monsieur 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!"

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, crying
aloud, "Long life to the Monseigneur! Long life to his Eminence! Long
life to the great cardinal!" The cardinal listened with a smile to this
vociferous manifestation of the feelings of M. Bonacieux; and then, when
Bonacieux's cries were no longer audible, "Good!" said he, "that man
would henceforward lay down his life for me." And the cardinal began to
examine with the greatest attention the map of La Rochelle, which, as we
have said, lay open on the desk, tracing with a pencil the line in which
t