n 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 amon