I turned very red, I believe; but he proceeded. "People will talk of their neighbours' affairs, you know; and 'tis useless to be angry with them--but hearing this, as I have said, I felt an irresistible impulse to visit you, and to render you any assistance in my power. Nor will I regret it, even if I have been misinformed, inasmuch as it has gained me the pleasure of your acquaintance." With such a speech there was no possible means of being offended, though I felt not a little angry at my affairs having been made matters of commiseration throughout the town. I was rather inclined to believe also, that the trouble which M. de Retz had given himself did not originate entirely in benevolence. I did not doubt that charity might have some part therein, for he had acquired a reputation, which I believe he deserved, for generous feeling towards the sufferings of his fellow-creatures; but the motives of men are so mixed that it is in vain tracing their original source. Like a great stream, the course of human action arises very often in five or six different fountains, each of which has nearly the same right as the others to be considered the head: and besides this, in flowing on from its commencement to its end, it receives the accession of a thousand other different currents, so that at the last not one drop in a million is the pure water which welled from any individual source. I was very sure, therefore, of doing Monsieur de Retz no great injustice in supposing that his benevolence might be tinged with other feelings; and I replied, "I should be sorry, sir, that a mistake had given you the trouble of coming here, did I not derive so much benefit from that false rumour. My name is the Count de l'Orme, and I am happy that the bounty you proposed to exercise upon me may be turned towards some other person more needing and deserving it than I do." "Be not offended, Monsieur de l'Orme," replied De Retz, "at a mistake which has nothing in it dishonouring. Poverty is much oftener a virtue than wealth. But your name strikes me--De l'Orme!--Surely that was not the name of the young gentleman that his highness the Count de Soissons expected to join him from Bearn--oh, no, I remember! it was Count Louis de Bigorre." "But no less the same person," replied I, with an unspeakable joy at seeing the clouds break away that had hung over my fate--at finding myself known and expected where I had fancied myself solitary amongst millions. I felt as if at those few words I leapt over the barrier which had confined me to my own loneliness, and mingled once more in the society of my fellows. "I have always," continued I, "been called Count Louis de Bigorre; but circumstances induced me, when I left my father's house, to assume the title which really belongs to the eldest son of the Counts of Bigorre."