Without my generous comrade I should never had seen the first representation of the 'Marriage of Figaro.' Mongenod was what was called in those days a charming cavalier; he was very gallant.
Sometimes I blamed him for his facile way of making intimacies and his too great amiability.His purse opened freely; he lived in a free-handed way; he would serve a man as second having only seen him twice.
Good God! how you send me back to the days and the ways of my youth!"said the worthy man, with his cheery smile.
"Are you sorry?" said Godefroid.
"Oh, no! and you can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you all this how great a place this event has held in my life.
"Mongenod, endowed with an excellent heart and fine courage, a trifle Voltairean, was inclined to play the nobleman," went on Monsieur Alain."His education at Grassins, where there were many young nobles, and his various gallantries, had given him the polished manners and ways of people of condition, who were then called aristocrats.You can therefore imagine how great was my surprise to see such symptoms of poverty in the young and elegant Mongenod of 1787 when my eyes left his face and rested on his garments.But as, at that unhappy period of our history, some persons assumed a shabby exterior for safety, and as he might have had some other and sufficient reasons for disguising himself, I awaited an explanation, although I opened the way to it.