," 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 whe