The Brotherhood of Consolation, Honoré de Balzac [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

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 by _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