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 o