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.
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