But tell me what to do.' 'You must try to get from him a written acknowledgment; for a debtor, however, insolvent he may be, may become solvent, and then he will pay.' Thereupon Bordin took from a tin box a case on which I saw the name of Mongenod; he showed me three receipts of a hundred francs each.'The next time he comes I shall have him admitted, and I shall make him add the interest and the two louis, and give me a note for the whole.I shall, at any rate, have things properly done, and be in a position to obtain payment.' 'Well,' said Ito Bordin, 'can you have my matter set right so far, as well as yours?
for I know you are a good man, and what you do will be right.' 'I have remained master of my ground,' he said; 'but when persons behave as you have done they are at the mercy of a man who can snap his fingers at them.As for me, I don't choose that any man should get the better of me,--get the better of a former attorney to the Chatelet!--ta-ra-ra! Every man to whom a sum of money is lent as heedlessly as you lent yours to Mongenod, ends, after a certain time, by thinking that money his own.It is no longer your money, it is /his/ money; you become his creditor,--an inconvenient, unpleasant person.A debtor will then try to get rid of you by some juggling with his conscience, and out of one hundred men in his position, seventy-five will do their best never to see or hear of you again.' 'Then you think only twenty-five men in a hundred are honest?' 'Did I say that?' he replied, smiling maliciously.'The estimate is too high?'"Monsieur Alain paused to put the fire together; that done, he resumed:--"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,'