'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 Inow 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 Isuspected, 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.