The conscience of an honest man,' I said, 'is a better security than the Funds.' Mongenod looked at me fixedly as I spoke, and seemed to be inlaying my words upon his heart.He put out his right hand, I laid my left into it, and we held them together,--I deeply moved, and he with two big tears rolling down his cheeks.The sight of those tears wrung my heart.I was more moved still when Mongenod pulled out a ragged foulard handkerchief to wipe them away.'Wait here,' I said; and Iwent to my secret hiding-place with a heart as agitated as though Ihad heard a woman say she loved me.I came back with two rolls of fifty louis each.'Here, count them.' He would not count them; and he looked about him for a desk on which to write, he said, a proper receipt.I positively refused to take any paper.'If I should die,' Isaid, 'my heirs would trouble you.This is to be between ourselves.'
"Well," continued Monsieur Alain, smiling, "when Mongenod found me a good friend he ceased to look as sad and anxious as when he entered;in fact, he became quite gay.My housekeeper gave us some oysters, white wine, and an omelet, with broiled kidneys, and the remains of a pate my old mother had sent me; also some dessert, coffee, and liqueur of the Iles.Mongenod, who had been starving for two days, was fed up.
We were so interested in talking about our life before the Revolution that we sat at table till three in the afternoon.Mongenod told me how he had lost his fortune.In the first place, his father having invested the greater part of his capital in city loans, when they fell Mongenod lost two thirds of all he had.Then, having sold his house in the rue de Savoie, he was forced to receive the price in assignats.
After that he took into his head to found a newspaper, 'La Sentinelle;' that compelled him to fly at the end of six months.His hopes, he said, were now fixed on the success of a comic opera called 'Les Peruviens.' When he said that I began to tremble.Mongenod turned author, wasting his money on a newspaper, living no doubt in the theatres, connected with singers at the Feydeau, with musicians, and all the queer people who lurk behind the scenes,--to tell you the truth, he didn't seem my Mongenod.I trembled.But how could I take back the hundred louis? I saw each roll in each pocket of his breeches like the barrels of two pistols.
"Then," continued Monsieur Alain, and this time he sighed, "Mongenod went away.When I was alone, and no longer in presence of hard and cruel poverty, I began, in spite of myself, to reflect.I was sobered.
'Mongenod,' thought I, 'is perhaps thoroughly depraved; he may have been playing a comedy at my expense.' His gaiety, the moment I had handed over to him readily such a large sum of money, struck me then as being too like the joy of the valets on the stage when they catch a Geronte.I ended, where I ought to have begun, by resolving to make some investigations as to my friend Mongenod, who had given me his address,--written on the back of a playing card! I did not choose, as a matter of delicacy, to go and see him the next day; he might have thought there was distrust in such promptness, as, indeed, there would have been.The second day I had certain matters to attend to which took all my time, and it was only at the end of two weeks that, not seeing or hearing of Mongenod, I went one morning from the Croix-Rouge, where I was then living, to the rue des Moineaux, where he lived.I found he was living in furnished lodgings of the lowest class; but the landlady was a very worthy woman, the widow of a magistrate who had died on the scaffold; she was utterly ruined by the Revolution, and had only a few louis with which to begin the hazardous trade of taking lodgers."Here Monsieur Alain interrupted himself to explain."I knew her later," he said; "she then had seven houses in Saint-Roch, and was making quite a little fortune.
"'The citizen Mongenod is not at home,' the landlady said to me; 'but there is some one there.' This remark excited my curiosity.I went up to the fifth story.A charming person opened the door,--oh, such a pretty young woman! who looked at me rather suspiciously and kept the door half closed.'I am Alain, a friend of Mongenod's,' I said.
Instantly the door opened wide, and I entered a miserable garret, which was, nevertheless, kept with the utmost neatness.The pretty young woman offered me a chair before a fireplace where were ashes but no fire, at the corner of which I saw a common earthen foot-warmer.
'It makes me very happy, monsieur,' she said, taking my hand and pressing it affectionately, 'to be able to express to you my gratitude.You have indeed saved us.Were it not for you I might never have seen Mongenod again.He might,--yes, he would have thrown himself in the river.He was desperate when he left me to go and see you.' On examining this person I was surprised to see her head tied up in a foulard, and along the temples a curious dark line; but I presently saw that her head was shaved.'Have you been ill?' I asked, as Inoticed this singularity.She cast a glance at a broken mirror in a shabby frame and colored; then the tears came into her eyes.'Yes, monsieur,' she said, 'I had horrible headaches, and I was obliged to have my hair cut off; it came to my feet.' 'Am I speaking to Madame Mongenod?' I asked.'Yes, monsieur,' she answered, giving me a truly celestial look.I bowed to the poor little woman and went away, intending to make the landlady tell me something about them; but she was out.I was certain that poor young woman had sold her hair to buy bread.I went from there to a wood merchant and ordered half a cord of wood, telling the cartman and the sawyer to take the bill, which Imade the dealer receipt to the name of citizen Mongenod, and give it to the little woman.
"There ends the period of what I long called /my foolishness/," said Monsieur Alain, clasping his hands and lifting them with a look of repentance.
Godefroid could not help smiling.He was, as we shall see, greatly mistaken in that smile.
