btain from them all the sums we need. Frederic
(his father gave him my name in America),--Frederic Mongenod is, at
thirty-seven years of age, one of the ablest, and most upright, bankers
in Paris. Not very long ago Madame Mongenod admitted to me that she had
sold her hair, as I suspected, for twelve francs to buy bread. She gives
me now twenty-four cords of wood a year for my poor people, in exchange
for the half cord which I once sent her."

"This explains to me your relations with the house of Mongenod," said
Godefroid,--"and your fortune."

Again the goodman looked at Godefroid with a smile, and the same
expression of kindly mischief.

"Oh, go on!" said Godefroid, seeing from his manner that he had more to
tell.

"This conclusion, my dear Godefroid, made the deepest impression on me.
If the man who had suffered so much, if my friend forgave my injustice,
I could not forgive myself."

"Oh!" ejaculated Godefroid.

"I resolved to devote all my superfluous means--about ten thousand
francs a year--to acts of intelligent benevolence," continued Monsieur
Alain, tranquilly. "About this time it was that I made the acquaintance
of a judge of the Lower Civil Court of the Seine named Popinot, whom
we had the great grief of losing three years ago, and who practised for
fifteen years an active and most intelligent charity in the quartier
Saint-Marcel. It was he, with the venerable vicar of Notre-Dame and
Madame, who first thought of founding the work in which we are now
co-operating, and which, since 1825, has quietly done much good. This
work has found its soul in Madame de la Chanterie, for she is truly the
inspiration of this enterprise. The vicar has known how to make us more
religious than we were at first, by showing us the necessity of being
virtuous ourselves in order to inspire virtue; in short, to preach by
example. The farther we have advanced in our work, the happier we have
mutually found ourselves. And so, you see, it really was the repentance
I felt for misconceiving the heart of my friend which gave me the idea
of devoting to the poor, through my own hands, the fortune he returned
to me, and which I accepted without objecting to the immensity of the
sum returned in proportion to the sum lent. Its destination justified my
taking it."

This narration, made quietly, without assumption, but with a gentle
kindliness in accent, look, and gesture, would have inspired Godefroid
to enter this noble and sacred assoc