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