“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 over its members of repression; as for punishment, I deny it that
right. Repression suffices; and that, besides, brings with it punishment
enough.
“So,” resumed Monsieur Alain, continuing his history, having drawn from
it that noble teaching, “after listening to the gossip of the Parisian,
and relying on the wisdom of my old master, I condemned Mongenod. His
play, ‘Les Peruviens,’ was announced. I expected to receive a ticket
from Mongenod for the first representation; I established in my own mind
a sort of claim on him. It seemed to me that by reason of my loan my
friend was a sort of vassal of mine, who owed me a number of things
besides the interest on my money. We all think that. Mongenod not only
did not send me a ticket, but I saw him from a distance coming towards
me in that dark passage under the Theatre Feydeau, well dressed, almost
elegant; he pretended not to see me; then, after he had passed and I
turned to run after him, my debtor hastily escaped through a transverse
alley. This circumstance greatly irritated me; and the irritation,
instead of subsiding with time, only increased, and for the following
reason: Some days after this encounter, I wrote to Mongenod somewhat
in these terms: ‘My friend, you ought not to think me indifferent to
whatever happens to you of good or evil. Are you satisfied with the
success of ‘Les Peruviens’? You forgot me (of course it was your right
to do so) for the first representation, at which I should have applauded
you. But, nevertheless, I hope you found a Peru in your Peruvians, for I
have found a use for my funds, and shall look to you for the payment
of them when the note falls due. Your friend, Alain.’ After waiting two
weeks for an answer, I went to the rue des Moineaux. The landlady told
me that the little wife really did go away with her father at the time
when Mongenod told Bordin of their departure. Mongenod always left the
garret very early in the morning and did not return till late at night.
Another two weeks, I wrote again, thus: ‘My dear Mongenod, I cannot
find you, and you do not reply to my letters. I do not understand your
conduct. If I behaved thus to you, what would you think of me?’ I did
not subscribe the letter as before, ‘Your friend,’ I merely wrote, ‘Kind
regards.’
“Well, it was all of no use,” said Monsieur Alain. “A month went by
and I had no news of Mongenod. ‘Les Peruviens’ did not obtain the great
success on which he counted. I went to the twentieth representation,
thinking to find him and obtain my money. The house was less than half
full; but Madame Scio was very beautiful. They told me in the foyer that
the play would run a few nights longer. I went seven different times to
Mongenod’s lodging and did not find him; each time I left my name with
the landlady. At last I wrote again: ‘Monsieur, if you do not wish to
lose my respect, as you have my friendship, you will treat me now as a
stranger,--that is to say, with politeness; and you will tell me when
you will be ready to pay your note, which is now due. I shall act
according to your answer. Your obedient servant, Alain.’ No answer. We
were then in 1799; one year, all but two months, had expired. At the
end of those two months I went to Bordin. Bordin took the note, had
it protested, and sued Mongenod for me. Meantime the disasters of the
French armies had produced such depreciation of the Funds that investors
could buy a five-francs dividend on seven francs capital. Therefore,
for my hundred louis in gold, I might have bought myself fifteen hundred
francs of income. Every morning, as I took my coffee and read the paper,
I said to myself: ‘That cursed Mongenod! if it were not for him I
should have three thousand francs a year to live on.’ Mongenod became
my _bete-noire_; I inveighed against him even as I walked the streets.
‘Bordin is there,’ I thought to myself; ‘Bordin will put the screws on,
and a good thing, too.’ My feelings turned to hatred, and my hatred to
imprecations; I cursed the man, and I believed he had every vice. ‘Ah!
Monsieur Barillaud was very right,’ thought I, ‘in all he told me!’”
Monsieur Alain paused reflectively.
“Yes,” he said again, “I thought him very right in all he told me. At
last, one morning, in came my debtor, no more embarrassed than if he
didn’t owe me a sou. When I saw him I felt all the shame he ought to
have felt. I was like a criminal taken in the act; I was all upset.
The eighteenth Brumaire had just taken place. Public affairs were doing
well, the Funds had gone up. Bonaparte was off to fight the battle
of Marengo. ‘It is unfortunate, monsieur,’ I said, receiving Mongenod
standing, ‘that I owe your visit to a sheriff’s summons.’ Mongenod took
a chair and sat down. ‘I came to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I am totally
unable to pay you.’ ‘You made me miss a fine investment before the
election of the First Consul,--an investment which would have given me
a little fortune.’ ‘I know it, Alain,’ he said, ‘I know it. But what is
the good of suing me and crushing me with bills of costs? I have nothing
with which to pay anything. Lately I received letters from my wife and
father-in-law; they have bought land with the money you lent me, and
they send me a list of things they need to improve it. Now, unless some
one prevents it, I shall sail on a Dutch vessel from Flushing, whither I
have sent the few things I am taking out to them. Bonaparte has won the
battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, I may safely rejoin my family;
and I have need to, for my dear little wife is about to give birth to a
child.’ ‘And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘for I believed you my friend.’ At that moment I
felt myself inferior to Mongenod, so sublime did he seem to me as he
said those grand words. ‘Did I not speak to you frankly,’ he said,
‘in this very room? I came to you, Alain, as the only person who would
really understand me. I told you that fifty louis would be lost, but a
hundred I could return to you. I did not bind myself by saying when; for
how could I know the time at which my long struggle with disaster would
end? You were my last friend. All others, even our old master Bordin,
despised me for the very reason that I borrowed money of them. Oh! you
do not know, Alain, the dreadful sensation which grips the heart of an
honest man when, in the throes of poverty, he goes to a friend and asks
him for succor,--and all that follows! I hope you never may know it;
it is far worse than the anguish of death. You have written me letters
which, if I had written them to you in a like situation, you would have
thought very odious. You expected of me that which it was out of my
power to do. But you are the only person to whom I shall try to justify
myself. In spite of your severity, and though from being a friend you
became a creditor on the day when Bordin asked for my note on your
behalf (thus abrogating the generous compact you had made with me there,
on that spot, when we clasped hands and mingled our tears),--well, in
spite of all that, I have remembered that day, and because of it I have
come here to say to you, You do not know misery, therefore do not judge
it. I have not had one moment when I could answer you. Would you have
wished me to come here and cajole you with words? I could not pay you;
I did not even have enough for the bare necessities of those whose lives
depended on me. My play brought little. A novice in theatrical ways, I
became a prey to musicians, actors, journalists, orchestras. To get
the means to leave Paris and join my family, and carry to them the few
things they need, I have sold “Les Peruviens” outright to the director,
with two other pieces which I had in my portfolio. I start for Holland
without a sou; I must reach Flushing as best I can; my voyage is paid,
that is all. Were it not for the pity of my landlady, who has confidence
in me, I should have to travel on foot, with my bag upon my back. But,
in spite of your doubts of me, I, remembering that without you I never
could have sent my wife and father-in-law to New York, am forever
grateful to you. No, Monsieur Alain, I shall not forget that the hundred
louis d’or you lent me would have yielded you to-day fifteen hundred
francs a year.’ ‘I desire to believe you, Mongenod,’ I said, shaken
by the tone in which he made this explanation. ‘Ah, you no longer say
_monsieur_ to me!’ he said quickly, with a tender glance. ‘My God! I
shall quit France with less regret if I can leave one man behind me in
whose eyes I am not half a swindler, nor a spendthrift, nor a man of
illusions! Alain, I have loved an angel in the midst of my misery. A man
who truly loves cannot be despicable.’ At those words I stretched out my
hand to him. He took it and wrung it. ‘May heaven protect you!’ I said.
‘Are we still friends?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It shall never
be that my childhood’s comrade and the friend of my youth left me for
America under the feeling that I was angry with him.’ Mongenod kissed
me, with tears in his eyes, and rushed away.”
Monsieur Alain stopped in his narrative for an instant and looked at
Godefroid. “I remember that day with some satisfaction,” he said. Then
he resumed:
“A week or so later I met Bordin and told him of that interview. He
smiled and said: ‘I hope it was not a pretty bit of comedy. Didn’t he
ask for anything?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘Well, he came to see me the same
day. I was almost as touched as you; and he asked me for means to get
food on his journey. Well, well, time will show!’ These remarks of
Bordin made me fear I had foolishly yielded to mistaken sensibility.
‘Nevertheless,’ I said to myself, ‘he, the old lawyer, did as I did.’
I do not think it necessary to explain to you how I lost all, or nearly
all, my property. I had placed a little in the Funds, which gave me five
hundred francs a year; all else was gone. I was then thirty-four years
old. I obtained, through the influence of Monsieur Bordin, a place as
clerk, with a salary of eight hundred francs, in a branch office of
the Mont-de-piete, rue des Augustins.[*] From that time I lived very
modestly. I found a small lodging in the rue des Marais, on the third
floor (two rooms and a closet), for two hundred and fifty francs a year.
I dined at a common boarding-house for forty francs a month. I copied
writings at night. Ugly as I was and poor, I had to renounce marriage.”
[*] The Mont-de-Piete and its branches are pawn-shops under
control of the government.--TR.
As Godefroid heard this judgment which the poor man passed upon himself
with beautiful simplicity and resignation, he made a movement which
proved, far more than any confidence in words could have done, the
resemblance of their destinies; and the goodman, in answer to that
eloquent gesture, seemed to expect the words that followed it.
“Have you never been loved?” asked Godefroid.
“Never!” he said; “except by Madame, who returns to us all the love we
have for her,--a love which I may call divine. You must be aware of it.
We live through her life as she lives through ours; we have but one soul
among us; and such pleasures, though they are not physical, are none the
less intense; we exist through our hearts. Ah, my child!” he continued,
“when women come to appreciate moral qualities, they are indifferent
to others; and they are then old--Oh! I have suffered deeply,--yes,
deeply!”
“And I, in the same way,” said Godefroid.
“Under the Empire,” said the worthy man, resuming his narrative, “the
Funds did not always pay their dividends regularly; it was necessary
to be prepared for suspensions of payment. From 1802 to 1814 there was
scarcely a week that I did not attribute my misfortune to Mongenod.
‘If it were not for Mongenod,’ I used to say to myself, ‘I might have
married. If I had never known him I should not be obliged to live in
such privation.’ But then, again, there were other times when I said,
‘Perhaps the unfortunate fellow has met with ill luck over there.’ In
1806, at a time when I found my life particularly hard to bear, I wrote
him a long letter, which I sent by way of Holland. I received no answer.
I waited three years, placing all my hopes on that answer. At last I
resigned myself to my life. To the five hundred francs I received from
the Funds I now added twelve hundred from the Mont-de-piete (for they
raised my salary), and five hundred which I obtained from Monsieur Cesar
Birotteau, perfumer, for keeping his books in the evening. Thus, not
only did I manage to get along comfortably, but I laid by eight hundred
francs a year. At the beginning of 1814 I invested nine thousand francs
of my savings at forty francs in the Funds, and thus I was sure of
sixteen hundred francs a year for my old age. By that time I had fifteen
hundred a year from the Mont-de-piete, six hundred for my book-keeping,
sixteen hundred from the Funds; in all, three thousand seven hundred
francs a year. I took a lodging in the rue de Seine, and lived a little
better. My place had brought me into relations with many unfortunates.
For the last twelve years I had known better than any man whatsoever the
misery of the poor. Once or twice I had been able to do a real service.
I felt a vivid pleasure when I found that out of ten persons relieved,
one or two households had been put on their feet. It came into my mind
that benevolence ought not to consist in throwing money to those who
suffered. ‘Doing charity,’ to use that common expression, seemed to me
too often a premium offered to crime. I began to study the question. I
was then fifty years of age, and my life was nearly over. ‘Of what good
am I?’ thought I. ‘To whom can I leave my savings? When I have furnished
my rooms handsomely, and found a good cook, and made my life suitable in
all respects, what then?--how shall I employ my time?’ Eleven years of
revolution, and fifteen years of poverty, had, as I may say, eaten up
the most precious parts of my life,--used it up in sterile toil for my
own individual preservation. No man at the age of fifty could spring
from that obscure, repressed condition to a brilliant future; but every
man could be of use. I understood by this time that watchful care and
wise counsels have tenfold greater value than money given; for the poor,
above all things, need a guide, if only in the labor they do for others,
for speculators are never lacking to take advantage of them. Here I saw
before me both an end and an occupation, not to speak of the exquisite
enjoyments obtained by playing in a miniature way the role of
Providence.”
“And to-day you play it in a grand way, do you not?” asked Godefroid,
eagerly.
“Ah! you want to know everything,” said the old man. “No, no! Would you
believe it,” he continued after this interruption, “the smallness of
my means to do the work I now desired to do brought back the thought
of Mongenod. ‘If it were not for Mongenod,’ I kept saying to myself, ‘I
could do so much more. If a dishonest man had not deprived me of fifteen
hundred francs a year I could save this or that poor family.’ Excusing
my own impotence by accusing another, I felt that the miseries of those
to whom I could offer nothing but words of consolation were a curse upon
Mongenod. That thought soothed my heart. One morning, in January, 1816,
my housekeeper announced,--whom do you suppose?--Mongenod! Monsieur
Mongenod! And whom do you think I saw enter my room? The beautiful young
woman I had once seen,--only now she was thirty-six years old,--followed
by her three children and Mongenod. He looked younger than when he went
away; for prosperity and happiness do shed a halo round their favorites.
Thin, pale, yellow, shrivelled, when I last saw him, he was now plump,
sleek, rosy as a prebendary, and well dressed. He flung himself into
my arms. Feeling, perhaps, that I received him coldly, his first words
were: ‘Friend, I could not come sooner. The ocean was not free to
passenger ships till 1815; then it took me a year to close up my
business and realize my property. I have succeeded, my friend. When I
received your letter in 1806, I started in a Dutch vessel to bring you
myself a little fortune; but the union of Holland with the French Empire
caused the vessel to be taken by the English and sent to Jamaica, from
which island I escaped by mere chance. When I reached New York I found
I was a victim to the bankruptcy of others. In my absence my poor
Charlotte had not been able to protect herself against schemers. I
was therefore forced to build up once more the edifice of my fortunes.
However, it is all done now, and here we are. By the way those children
are looking at you, you must be aware that we have often talked to
them of their father’s benefactor.’ ‘Oh, yes, yes, monsieur!’ said
the beautiful Mongenod, ‘we have never passed a single day without
remembering you. Your share has been set aside in all our affairs. We
have looked forward eagerly to the happiness we now have in returning
to you your fortune, not thinking for a moment that the payment of these
just dues can ever wipe out our debt of gratitude.’ With those words
Madame Mongenod held out to me that magnificent box you see over there,
in which were one hundred and fifty notes of a thousand francs each.”
The old man paused an instant as if to dwell on that moment; then he
went on:--
“Mongenod looked at me fixedly and said: ‘My poor Alain, you have
suffered, I know; but we did divine your sufferings; we did try every
means to send the money to you, and failed in every attempt. You told
me you could not marry,--that I had prevented it. But here is our eldest
daughter; she has been brought up in the thought of becoming your wife,
and she will have a dowry of five hundred thousand francs.’ ‘God forbid
that I should make her miserable!’ I cried hastily, looking at the girl,
who was as beautiful as her mother when I first saw her. I drew her to
me to kiss her brow. ‘Don’t be afraid, my beautiful child!’ I said. ‘A
man of fifty to a girl of seventeen?--never! and a man as plain and ugly
as I am?--never!’ I cried. ‘Monsieur,’ she said, ‘my father’s benefactor
could not be ugly for me.’ Those words, said spontaneously, with simple
candor, made me understand how true was all that Mongenod had said. I
then gave him my hand, and we embraced each other again. ‘My friend,’
I said, ‘I have done you wrong. I have often accused you, cursed
you.’ ‘You had the right to do so, Alain,’ he replied, blushing; ‘you
suffered, and through me.’ I took Mongenod’s note from my desk and
returned it to him. ‘You will all stay and breakfast with me, I hope?’ I
said to the family. ‘On condition that you dine with us,’ said Mongenod.
‘We arrived yesterday. We are going to buy a house; and I mean to open
a banking business between Paris and North America, so as to leave it to
this fellow here,’ he added, showing me his eldest son, who was fifteen
years old. We spent the rest of the day together and went to the play;
for Mongenod and his family were actually hungry for the theatre. The
next morning I placed the whole sum in the Funds, and I now had in all
about fifteen thousand francs a year. This fortune enabled me to give up
book-keeping at night, and also to resign my place at the Mont-de-piete,
to the great satisfaction of the underling who stepped into my shoes. My
friend died in 1827, at the age of sixty-three, after founding the great
banking-house of Mongenod and Company, which made enormous profits
from the first loans under the Restoration. His daughter, to whom he
subsequently gave a million in dowry, married the Vicomte de Fontaine.
The eldest son, whom you know, is not yet married; he lives with his
mother and brother. We obtain 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 association if his resolution had not
already been taken.
“You know the world very little,” he said, “if you have such scruples
about a matter that would not weigh on any other man’s conscience.”
“I know only the unfortunate,” said Monsieur Alain. “I do not desire to
know a world in which men are so little afraid of judging one another.
But see! it is almost midnight, and I still have my chapter of the
‘Imitation of Jesus Christ’ to meditate upon! Good-night!”
Godefroid took the old man’s hand and pressed it, with an expression of
admiration.
“Can you tell me Madame de la Chanterie’s history?”
“Impossible, without her consent,” replied Monsieur Alain; “for it is
connected with one of the most terrible events of Imperial policy. It
was through my friend Bordin that I first knew Madame. He had in his
possession all the secrets of that noble life; it was he who, if I may
say so, led me to this house.”
“I thank you,” said Godefroid, “for having told me your life; there are
many lessons in it for me.”
“Do you know what is the moral of it?”
“Tell me,” said Godefroid, “for perhaps I may see something different in
it from what you see.”
“Well, it is this: that pleasure is an accident in a Christian’s life;
it is not the aim of it; and this we learn too late.”
“What happens when we turn to Christianity?” asked Godefroid.
“See!” said the goodman.
He pointed with his finger to some letters of gold on a black ground
which the new lodger had not observed, for this was the first time he
had ever been in Monsieur Alain’s room. Godefroid turned and read the
words: TRANSIRE BENEFACIENDO.
“That is our motto. If you become one of us, that will be your only
commission. We read that commission, which we have given to ourselves,
at all times, in the morning when we rise, in the evening when we lie
down, and when we are dressing. Ah! if you did but know what immense
pleasures there are in accomplishing that motto!”
“Such as--?” said Godefroid, hoping for further revelations.
“I must tell you that we are as rich as Baron de Nucingen himself. But
the ‘Imitation of Jesus Christ’ forbids us to regard our wealth as our
own. We are only the spenders of it; and if we had any pride in
being that, we should not be worthy of dispensing it. It would not be
_transire benefaciendo_; it would be inward enjoyment. For if you say
to yourself with a swelling of the nostrils, ‘I play the part of
Providence!’ (as you might have thought if you had been in my place this
morning and saved the future lives of a whole family), you would become
a Sardanapalus,--an evil one! None of these gentlemen living here thinks
of himself when he does good. All vanity, all pride, all self-love, must
be stripped off, and that is hard to do,--yes, very hard.”
Godefroid bade him good-night, and returned to his own room, deeply
affected by this narrative. But his curiosity was more whetted than
satisfied, for the central figure of the picture was Madame de la
Chanterie. The history of the life of that woman became of the utmost
importance to him, so that he made the obtaining of it the object of
his stay in that house. He already perceived in this association of five
persons a vast enterprise of Charity; but he thought far less of that
than he did of its heroine.