Оноре де Бальзак
The Brotherhood of Consolation
VII. MONSIEUR ALAIN TELLS HIS SECRETS
One evening Godefroid determined to pay a visit to his neighbor on the floor above him, with the intention of satisfying a curiosity more excited by the apparent impossibility of a catastrophe in such an existence than it would have been under the expectation of discovering some terrible episode in the life of a corsair.
At the words “Come in!” given in answer to two raps struck discreetly on the door, Godefroid turned the key which was in the lock and found Monsieur Alain sitting by the fire reading, before he went to bed, his accustomed chapter in the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” by the light of two wax-candles, each protected by a moveable green shade, such as whist-players use.
The goodman wore trousers a pied and his gray camlet dressing-gown. His feet were at a level with the fire, resting on a cushion done in worsted-work, as were his slippers, by Madame de la Chanterie. The fine head of the old man, without other covering than its crown of white hair, almost like that of a monk, stood out in clear relief against the brown background of an enormous armchair.
Monsieur Alain gently laid his book, which was much worn at the corners, on a little table with twisted legs, and signed to the young man to take another chair, removing as he did so a pair of spectacles which were hanging on the end of his nose.
“Are you ill, that you have left your room at this hour?” he asked.
“Dear Monsieur Alain,” said Godefroid, frankly, “I am tortured with a curiosity which one word from you will make very harmless or very indiscreet; and that explains clearly enough the spirit in which I shall ask my question.”
“Oh! oh! and what is your question?” said the good soul, looking at the young man with an eye that was half mischievous.
“What was it that brought you here to lead the life that you live here? For, surely, to accept the doctrines of such total renunciation of all personal interests, a man must have been disgusted with the world, or else have injured others.”
“Eh! my dear lad,” replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that the genius of a painter ever imagined, “can we not be moved to the deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds within her walls? Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the spur of remorse or wounded vanity to make him devote himself to outcast children?”
“You close my mouth, for if ever a soul resembled that of the Christian hero, it is yours,” said Godefroid.
In spite of the hardness which age had given to the wrinkled yellow skin of his face, the old man blushed, for he seemed to have provoked that comparison; though any one who knew his modesty would have been certain he never dreamed of it. Godefroid was aware by this time that Madame de la Chanterie’s inmates had no taste for that sort of incense. Nevertheless, the extreme simplicity of the good old soul was more disturbed by this idea than a young girl would have been by an improper thought.
“Though I am very far indeed from Saint Vincent de Paul morally,” said Monsieur Alain, “I think I do resemble him physically.”
Godefroid was about to speak, but was stopped by a gesture of the old man, whose nose, it must be owned, had the tuberous appearance of that of the Saint, and whose face, a good deal like that of an old vine-dresser, was an exact duplicate of the broad, common face of the founder of Foundling hospitals.
“As for me, you are right enough,” he went on; “my vocation for our work was brought about by repentance, as the result of a – folly.”
“A folly, – you!” Godefroid exclaimed softly, the word entirely putting out of his head what he meant to say.
“Ah! dear me, what I am going to tell you will seem, I dare say, a trifle to you, – a mere bit of nonsense; but before the tribunal of conscience it was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind may very well torment the conscience of a weak Christian.”
After a preface of this kind, the curiosity of the disciple of course knew no bounds. What could be the crime of the worthy soul whom Madame de la Chanterie called her paschal lamb? The thought crossed Godefroid’s mind that a book might be written on it, called “The Sins of a Sheep.” Sheep are sometimes quite ferocious towards grass and flowers. One of the tenderest republicans of those days was heard to assert that the best of human beings was cruel to something. But the kindly Alain! – he, who like my uncle Toby, wouldn’t crush a gnat till it had stung him twenty times, – that sweet soul to have been tortured by repentance!
This reflection in Godefroid’s mind filled the pause made by the old man after saying, “Now listen to me!” – a pause he filled himself by pushing his cushion under Godefroid’s feet to share it with him.
“I was then about thirty years of age,” he said. “It was the year ‘98, if I remember right, – a period when young men were forced to have the experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before my breakfast hour, which was nine o’clock, my old housekeeper ushered in one of the few friends remaining to me after the Revolution. My first word was to ask him to breakfast. My friend – his name was Mongenod, a fellow about twenty-eight years of age – accepted, but he did so in an awkward manner. I had not seen him since 1793!”
“Mongenod!” cried Godefroid; “why, that is – ”
“If you want to know the end before the beginning, how am I to tell you my history?” said the old man, smiling.
Godefroid made a sign which promised absolute silence.
“When Mongenod sat down,” continued Monsieur Alain, “I noticed that his shoes were worn out. His stockings had been washed so often that it was difficult to say if they were silk or not. His breeches, of apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though the collar was greasy from pomade or powder, and had the white metal buttons now copper-colored. The whole was so shabby that I tried not to look at it. The hat – an opera hat of a kind we then carried under the arm, and not on the head – had seen many governments. Nevertheless, my poor friend must have spent a few sous at the barber’s, for he was neatly shaved; and his hair, gathered behind his head with a comb and powdered carefully, smelt of pomade. I saw two chains hanging down on his breeches, – two rusty steel chains, – but no appearance of a watch in his pocket. I tell you all these details, as they come to me,” said Monsieur Alain; “I seldom think of this matter now; but when I do, all the particulars come vividly before me.”
He paused a moment and then resumed: —
“It was winter, and Mongenod evidently had no cloak; for I noticed that several lumps of snow, which must have dropped from the roofs as he walked along, were sticking to the collar of his coat. When he took off his rabbit-skin gloves, and I saw his right hand, I noticed the signs of labor, and toilsome labor, too. Now his father, the advocate of the Grand Council, had left him some property, – about five or six thousand francs a year. I saw at once that he had come to me to borrow money. I had, in a secret hiding-place, two hundred louis d’or, – an enormous hoard at that time; for they were worth I couldn’t now tell you how many hundred thousand francs in assignats. Mongenod and I had studied at the same collage, – that of Grassins, – and we had met again in the same law-office, – that of Bordin, – a truly honest man. When you have spent your boyhood and played your youthful pranks with the same comrade, the sympathy between you and him has something sacred about it; his voice, his glance, stir certain chords in your heart which only vibrate under the memories that he brings back. Even if you have had cause of complaint against such a comrade, the rights of the friendship between you can never be effaced. But there had never been the slightest jar between us two. At the death of his father, in 1787, Mongenod was left richer than I. Though I had never borrowed money from him, I owed him pleasures which my father’s economy denied me. Without my generous comrade I should never had seen the first representation of the ‘Marriage of Figaro.’ Mongenod was what was called in those days a charming cavalier; he was very gallant. Sometimes I blamed him for his facile way of making intimacies and his too great amiability. His purse opened freely; he lived in a free-handed way; he would serve a man as second having only seen him twice. Good God! how you send me back to the days and the ways of my youth!” said the worthy man, with his cheery smile.
“Are you sorry?” said Godefroid.
“Oh, no! and you can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you all this how great a place this event has held in my life.
“Mongenod, endowed with an excellent heart and fine courage, a trifle Voltairean, was inclined to play the nobleman,” went on Monsieur Alain. “His education at Grassins, where there were many young nobles, and his various gallantries, had given him the polished manners and ways of people of condition, who were then called aristocrats. You can therefore imagine how great was my surprise to see such symptoms of poverty in the young and elegant Mongenod of 1787 when my eyes left his face and rested on his garments. But as, at that unhappy period of our history, some persons assumed a shabby exterior for safety, and as he might have had some other and sufficient reasons for disguising himself, I awaited an explanation, although I opened the way to it. ‘What a plight you are in, my dear Mongenod!’ I said, accepting the pinch of snuff he offered me from a copper and zinc snuff-box. ‘Sad indeed!’ he answered; ‘I have but one friend left, and that is you. I have done all I could to avoid appealing to you; but I must ask you for a hundred louis. The sum is large, I know,’ he went on, seeing my surprise; ‘but if you gave me fifty I should be unable ever to return them; whereas with one hundred I can seek my fortune in better ways, – despair will inspire me to find them.’ ‘Then you have nothing?’ I exclaimed. ‘I have,’ he said, brushing away a tear, ‘five sous left of my last piece of money. To come here to you I have had my boots blacked and my face shaved. I possess what I have on my back. But,’ he added, with a gesture, ‘I owe my landlady a thousand francs in assignats, and the man I buy cold victuals from refused me credit yesterday. I am absolutely without resources.’ ‘What do you think of doing?’ ‘Enlisting as a soldier if you cannot help me.’ ‘You! a soldier, Mongenod?’ ‘I will get myself killed, or I will be General Mongenod.’ ‘Well,’ I said, much moved, ‘eat your breakfast in peace; I have a hundred louis.’
“At that point,” said the goodman, interrupting himself and looking at Godefroid with a shrewd air, “I thought it best to tell him a bit of a fib.”
“‘That is all I possess in the world,’ I said. ‘I have been waiting for a fall in the Funds to invest that money; but I will put it in your hands instead, and you shall consider me your partner; I will leave to your conscience the duty of returning it to me in due time. 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 I went to my secret hiding-place with a heart as agitated as though I had 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,’ I said, ‘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 I noticed 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 I made 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.
“Two days later,” resumed the worthy man, “I met one of those men who are neither friends nor strangers, with whom we have relations from time to time, and call acquaintances, – a certain Monsieur Barillaud, who remarked accidentally, a propos of the ‘Peruviens,’ that the author was a friend of his. ‘Then you know citizen Mongenod?’ I said.
“In those days we were obliged by law to call each other ‘citizen,’” said Monsieur Alain to Godefroid, by way of parenthesis. Then he continued his narrative: —
“The citizen looked at me, exclaiming, ‘I wish I never had known him; for he has several times borrowed money of me, and shown his friendship by not returning it. He is a queer fellow, – good-hearted and all that, but full of illusions! always an imagination on fire! I will do him this justice, – he does not mean to deceive; but as he deceives himself about everything, he manages to behave like a dishonest man.’ ‘How much does he owe you?’ I asked. ‘Oh! a good many hundred francs. He’s a basket with a hole in the bottom. Nobody knows where his money goes; perhaps he doesn’t know himself.’ ‘Has he any resources?’ ‘Well, yes,’ said Barillaud, laughing; ‘just now he is talking of buying land among the savages in the United States.’ I carried away with me the drop of vinegar which casual gossip thus put into my heart, and it soured all my feelings. I went to see my old master, in whose office Mongenod and I had studied law; he was now my counsel. When I told him about my loan to Mongenod and the manner in which I had acted, – ‘What!’ he cried, ‘one of my old clerks to behave in that way! You ought to have put him off till the next day and come to see me. You would then have found out that I have forbidden my clerks to let Mongenod into this office. Within the last year he has borrowed three hundred francs of me in silver, – an enormous sum at present rates. Three days before he breakfasted with you I met him on the street, and he gave such a piteous account of his poverty that I let him have two louis.’ ‘If I have been the dupe of a clever comedian,’ I said to Bordin, ‘so much the worse for him, not for me. But tell me what to do.’ ‘You must try to get from him a written acknowledgment; for a debtor, however, insolvent he may be, may become solvent, and then he will pay.’ Thereupon Bordin took from a tin box a case on which I saw the name of Mongenod; he showed me three receipts of a hundred francs each. ‘The next time he comes I shall have him admitted, and I shall make him add the interest and the two louis, and give me a note for the whole. I shall, at any rate, have things properly done, and be in a position to obtain payment.’ ‘Well,’ said I to Bordin, ‘can you have my matter set right so far, as well as yours? for I know you are a good man, and what you do will be right.’ ‘I have remained master of my ground,’ he said; ‘but when persons behave as you have done they are at the mercy of a man who can snap his fingers at them. As for me, I don’t choose that any man should get the better of me, – get the better of a former attorney to the Chatelet! – ta-ra-ra! Every man to whom a sum of money is lent as heedlessly as you lent yours to Mongenod, ends, after a certain time, by thinking that money his own. It is no longer your money, it is his money; you become his creditor, – an inconvenient, unpleasant person. A debtor will then try to get rid of you by some juggling with his conscience, and out of one hundred men in his position, seventy-five will do their best never to see or hear of you again.’ ‘Then you think only twenty-five men in a hundred are honest?’ ‘Did I say that?’ he replied, smiling maliciously. ‘The estimate is too high?’”
Monsieur Alain paused to put the fire together; that done, he resumed: —
“Two weeks later I received a letter from Bordin asking me to go to his office and get my receipt. I went. ‘I tried to get fifty of your louis for you,’ he said, ‘but the birds had flown. Say good-by to your yellow boys; those pretty canaries are off to other climes. You have had to do with a sharper; that’s what he is. He declared to me that his wife and father-in-law had gone to the United States with sixty of your louis to buy land; that he intended to follow, for the purpose, he said, of making a fortune and paying his debts; the amount of which, carefully drawn up, he confided to me, requesting me to keep an eye on what became of his creditors. Here is a list of the items,’ continued Bordin, showing me a paper from which he read the total, – ‘Seventeen thousand francs in coin; a sum with which a house could be bought that would bring in two thousand francs a year.’ After replacing the list in the case, Bordin gave me a note for a sum equivalent to a hundred louis in gold, with a letter in which Mongenod admitted having received my hundred louis, on which he owed interest. ‘So now I am all right,’ I said to Bordin. ‘He cannot deny the debt,’ replied my old master; ‘but where there are no funds, even the king – I should say the Directory – can’t enforce rights.’ I went home. Believing that I had been robbed in a way intentionally screened from the law, I withdrew my esteem from Mongenod, and resigned myself philosophically.
“If I have dwelt on these details, which are so commonplace and seem so slight,” said the worthy man, looking at Godefroid, “it is not without good reason. I want to explain to you how I was led to act, as most men act, in defiance of the rules which savages observe in the smallest matters. Many persons would justify themselves by the opinion of so excellent a man as Bordin; but to-day I know myself to have been inexcusable. When it comes to condemning one of our fellows, and withdrawing our esteem from him, we should act from our own convictions only. But have we any right to make our heart a tribunal before which we arraign our neighbor? Where is the law? what is our standard of judgment? That which in us is weakness may be strength in our neighbor. So many beings, so many different circumstances for every act; and there are no two beings exactly alike in all humanity. Society alone has the right over its members of repression; as for punishment, I deny it that right. Repression suffices; and that, besides, brings with it punishment enough.
“So,” resumed Monsieur Alain, continuing his history, having drawn from it that noble teaching, “after listening to the gossip of the Parisian, and relying on the wisdom of my old master, I condemned Mongenod. His play, ‘Les Peruviens,’ was announced. I expected to receive a ticket from Mongenod for the first representation; I established in my own mind a sort of claim on him. It seemed to me that by reason of my loan my friend was a sort of vassal of mine, who owed me a number of things besides the interest on my money. We all think that. Mongenod not only did not send me a ticket, but I saw him from a distance coming towards me in that dark passage under the Theatre Feydeau, well dressed, almost elegant; he pretended not to see me; then, after he had passed and I turned to run after him, my debtor hastily escaped through a transverse alley. This circumstance greatly irritated me; and the irritation, instead of subsiding with time, only increased, and for the following reason: Some days after this encounter, I wrote to Mongenod somewhat in these terms: ‘My friend, you ought not to think me indifferent to whatever happens to you of good or evil. Are you satisfied with the success of ‘Les Peruviens’? You forgot me (of course it was your right to do so) for the first representation, at which I should have applauded you. But, nevertheless, I hope you found a Peru in your Peruvians, for I have found a use for my funds, and shall look to you for the payment of them when the note falls due. Your friend, Alain.’ After waiting two weeks for an answer, I went to the rue des Moineaux. The landlady told me that the little wife really did go away with her father at the time when Mongenod told Bordin of their departure. Mongenod always left the garret very early in the morning and did not return till late at night. Another two weeks, I wrote again, thus: ‘My dear Mongenod, I cannot find you, and you do not reply to my letters. I do not understand your conduct. If I behaved thus to you, what would you think of me?’ I did not subscribe the letter as before, ‘Your friend,’ I merely wrote, ‘Kind regards.’
“Well, it was all of no use,” said Monsieur Alain. “A month went by and I had no news of Mongenod. ‘Les Peruviens’ did not obtain the great success on which he counted. I went to the twentieth representation, thinking to find him and obtain my money. The house was less than half full; but Madame Scio was very beautiful. They told me in the foyer that the play would run a few nights longer. I went seven different times to Mongenod’s lodging and did not find him; each time I left my name with the landlady. At last I wrote again: ‘Monsieur, if you do not wish to lose my respect, as you have my friendship, you will treat me now as a stranger, – that is to say, with politeness; and you will tell me when you will be ready to pay your note, which is now due. I shall act according to your answer. Your obedient servant, Alain.’ No answer. We were then in 1799; one year, all but two months, had expired. At the end of those two months I went to Bordin. Bordin took the note, had it protested, and sued Mongenod for me. Meantime the disasters of the French armies had produced such depreciation of the Funds that investors could buy a five-francs dividend on seven francs capital. Therefore, for my hundred louis in gold, I might have bought myself fifteen hundred francs of income. Every morning, as I took my coffee and read the paper, I said to myself: ‘That cursed Mongenod! if it were not for him I should have three thousand francs a year to live on.’ Mongenod became my bete-noire; I inveighed against him even as I walked the streets. ‘Bordin is there,’ I thought to myself; ‘Bordin will put the screws on, and a good thing, too.’ My feelings turned to hatred, and my hatred to imprecations; I cursed the man, and I believed he had every vice. ‘Ah! Monsieur Barillaud was very right,’ thought I, ‘in all he told me!’”
Monsieur Alain paused reflectively.
“Yes,” he said again, “I thought him very right in all he told me. At last, one morning, in came my debtor, no more embarrassed than if he didn’t owe me a sou. When I saw him I felt all the shame he ought to have felt. I was like a criminal taken in the act; I was all upset. The eighteenth Brumaire had just taken place. Public affairs were doing well, the Funds had gone up. Bonaparte was off to fight the battle of Marengo. ‘It is unfortunate, monsieur,’ I said, receiving Mongenod standing, ‘that I owe your visit to a sheriff’s summons.’ Mongenod took a chair and sat down. ‘I came to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I am totally unable to pay you.’ ‘You made me miss a fine investment before the election of the First Consul, – an investment which would have given me a little fortune.’ ‘I know it, Alain,’ he said, ‘I know it. But what is the good of suing me and crushing me with bills of costs? I have nothing with which to pay anything. Lately I received letters from my wife and father-in-law; they have bought land with the money you lent me, and they send me a list of things they need to improve it. Now, unless some one prevents it, I shall sail on a Dutch vessel from Flushing, whither I have sent the few things I am taking out to them. Bonaparte has won the battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, I may safely rejoin my family; and I have need to, for my dear little wife is about to give birth to a child.’ ‘And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests?’ said I. ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘for I believed you my friend.’ At that moment I felt myself inferior to Mongenod, so sublime did he seem to me as he said those grand words. ‘Did I not speak to you frankly,’ he said, ‘in this very room? I came to you, Alain, as the only person who would really understand me. I told you that fifty louis would be lost, but a hundred I could return to you. I did not bind myself by saying when; for how could I know the time at which my long struggle with disaster would end? You were my last friend. All others, even our old master Bordin, despised me for the very reason that I borrowed money of them. Oh! you do not know, Alain, the dreadful sensation which grips the heart of an honest man when, in the throes of poverty, he goes to a friend and asks him for succor, – and all that follows! I hope you never may know it; it is far worse than the anguish of death. You have written me letters which, if I had written them to you in a like situation, you would have thought very odious. You expected of me that which it was out of my power to do. But you are the only person to whom I shall try to justify myself. In spite of your severity, and though from being a friend you became a creditor on the day when Bordin asked for my note on your behalf (thus abrogating the generous compact you had made with me there, on that spot, when we clasped hands and mingled our tears), – well, in spite of all that, I have remembered that day, and because of it I have come here to say to you, You do not know misery, therefore do not judge it. I have not had one moment when I could answer you. Would you have wished me to come here and cajole you with words? I could not pay you; I did not even have enough for the bare necessities of those whose lives depended on me. My play brought little. A novice in theatrical ways, I became a prey to musicians, actors, journalists, orchestras. To get the means to leave Paris and join my family, and carry to them the few things they need, I have sold “Les Peruviens” outright to the director, with two other pieces which I had in my portfolio. I start for Holland without a sou; I must reach Flushing as best I can; my voyage is paid, that is all. Were it not for the pity of my landlady, who has confidence in me, I should have to travel on foot, with my bag upon my back. But, in spite of your doubts of me, I, remembering that without you I never could have sent my wife and father-in-law to New York, am forever grateful to you. No, Monsieur Alain, I shall not forget that the hundred louis d’or you lent me would have yielded you to-day fifteen hundred francs a year.’ ‘I desire to believe you, Mongenod,’ I said, shaken by the tone in which he made this explanation. ‘Ah, you no longer say monsieur to me!’ he said quickly, with a tender glance. ‘My God! I shall quit France with less regret if I can leave one man behind me in whose eyes I am not half a swindler, nor a spendthrift, nor a man of illusions! Alain, I have loved an angel in the midst of my misery. A man who truly loves cannot be despicable.’ At those words I stretched out my hand to him. He took it and wrung it. ‘May heaven protect you!’ I said. ‘Are we still friends?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It shall never be that my childhood’s comrade and the friend of my youth left me for America under the feeling that I was angry with him.’ Mongenod kissed me, with tears in his eyes, and rushed away.”