“‘The citizen Mongenod is not at home,’ the landlady said to me; ’but there is some one there.’  This remark excited my curiosity.  I went up to the fifth story.  A charming person opened the door,—­oh, such a pretty young woman! who looked at me rather suspiciously and kept the door half closed.  ‘I am Alain, a friend of Mongenod’s,’ I said.  Instantly the door opened wide, and I entered a miserable garret, which was, nevertheless, kept with the utmost neatness.  The pretty young woman offered me a chair before a fireplace where were ashes but no fire, at the corner of which I saw a common earthen foot-warmer.  ‘It makes me very happy, monsieur,’ she said, taking my hand and pressing it affectionately, ’to be able to express to you my gratitude.  You have indeed saved us.  Were it not for you I might never have seen Mongenod again.  He might,—­yes, he would have thrown himself in the river.  He was desperate when 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:—­