Manon Lescaut
fault shall meet the severest punishment.
"M. G---- M---- was not long in finding out that he had been duped. I
am not sure whether he took any steps that night to discover us, but he
had influence enough to ensure an effectual pursuit, and we were
sufficiently imprudent to rely upon the extent of Paris and the
distance between our residence and his. Not only did he discover our
abode and our circumstances, but also who I was--the life that I had
led in Paris--Manon's former connection with B----,--the manner in
which she had deceived him: in a word, all the scandalous facts of our
history. He therefore resolved to have us apprehended, and treated
less as criminals than as vagabonds. An officer came abruptly one
morning into our bedroom, with half a dozen archers of the guard. They
first took possession of our money, or I should rather say, of
G----M----'s. They made us quickly get up, and conducted us to the
door, where we found two coaches, into one of which they forced poor
Manon, without any explanation, and I was taken in the other to St.
Lazare.
"One must have experienced this kind of reverse, to understand the
despair that is caused by it. The police were savage enough to deny me
the consolation of embracing Manon, or of bidding her farewell. I
remained for a long time ignorant of her fate. It was perhaps
fortunate for me that I was kept in a state of ignorance, for had I
known what she suffered, I should have lost my senses, probably my life.
"My unhappy mistress was dragged then from my presence, and taken to a
place the very name of which fills me with horror to remember. This to
be the lot of a creature the most perfect, who must have shared the
most splendid throne on earth, if other men had only seen and felt as I
did! She was not treated harshly there, but was shut up in a narrow
prison, and obliged, in solitary confinement, to perform a certain
quantity of work each day, as a necessary condition for obtaining the
most unpalatable food. I did not learn this till a long time after,
when I had myself endured some months of rough and cruel treatment.
"My guards not having told me where it was that they had been ordered
to conduct me, it was only on my arrival at St. Lazare that I learned
my destination. I would have preferred death, at that moment, to the
state into which I believed myself about to be thrown. I had the
utmost terror of this place. My misery was increased by the guards on
my entrance, examining once more my pockets, to ascertain whether I had
about me any arms or weapons of defence.
"The governor appeared. He had been informed of my apprehension. He
saluted me with great mildness. 'Do not, my good sir,' said I to him,
'allow me to be treated with indignity. I would suffer a hundred deaths
rather than quietly submit to degrading treatment.' 'No, no,' he
replied, 'you will act quietly and prudently, and we shall be mutually
content with each other.' He begged of me to ascend to one of the
highest rooms; I followed him without a murmur. The archers
accompanied us to the door, and the governor, entering the room, made a
sign for them to depart. 'I am your prisoner, I suppose?' said I;
'well, what do you intend to do with me?' He said, he was delighted to
see me adopt so reasonable a tone; that it would be his duty to
endeavour to inspire me with a taste for virtue and religion, and mine
to profit by his exhortations and advice: that lightly as I might be
disposed to rate his attentions to me, I should find nothing but
enjoyment in my solitude. 'Ah, enjoyment, indeed!' replied I; 'you do
not know, my good sir, the only thing on earth that could afford me
enjoyment.' 'I know it,' said he, 'but I trust your inclinations will
change.' His answer showed that he had heard of my adventures, and
perhaps of my name. I begged to know if such were the fact. He told
me candidly that they had informed him of every particular.
"This blow was the severest of any I had yet experienced. I literally
shed a torrent of tears, in all the bitterness of unmixed despair; I
could not reconcile myself to the humiliation which would make me a
proverb to all my acquaintances, and the disgrace of my family. I
passed a week in the most profound dejection, without being capable of
gaining any information, or of occupying myself with anything but my
own degradation. The remembrance even of Manon added nothing to my
grief; it only occurred to me as a circumstance that had preceded my
new sorrow; and the sense of shame and confusion was at present the
all-absorbing passion.
"There are few persons who have experienced the force of these special
workings of the mind. The generality of men are only sensible of five
or six passions, in the limited round of which they pass their lives,
and within which all their agitations are confined. Remove them from
the influence of love and hate, pleasure and pain, hope and fear, and
they have no further feeling. But persons of a finer cast can be
affected in a thousand different ways; it would almost seem that they
had more than five senses, and that they are accessible to ideas and
sensations which far exceed the ordinary faculties of human nature;
and, conscious that they possess a capacity which raises them above the
common herd, there is nothing of which they are more jealous. Hence
springs their impatience under contempt and ridicule; and hence it is
that a sense of debasement is perhaps the most violent of all their
emotions.
"I had this melancholy advantage at St. Lazare. My grief appeared to
the governor so excessive, that, dreading the consequences, he thought
he was bound to treat me with more mildness and indulgence. He visited
me two or three times a day; he often made me take a turn with him in
the garden, and showed his interest for me in his exhortations and good
advice. I listened always attentively; and warmly expressed my sense
of his kindness, from which he derived hopes of my ultimate conversion.
"'You appear to me,' said he one day, 'of a disposition so mild and
tractable, that I cannot comprehend the excesses into which you have
fallen. Two things astonish me: one is, how, with your good qualities,
you could have ever abandoned yourself to vice; and the other, which
amazes me still more, is, how you can receive with such perfect temper
my advice and instructions, after having lived so long in a course of
debauchery. If it be sincere repentance, you present a singular
example of the benign mercy of Heaven; if it proceed from the natural
goodness of your disposition, then you certainly have that within you
which warrants the hope that a protracted residence in this place will
not be required to bring you back to a regular and respectable life.'
"I was delighted to find that he had such an opinion of me. I resolved
to strengthen it by a continuance of good conduct, convinced that it
was the surest means of abridging the term of my confinement. I begged
of him to furnish me with books. He was agreeably surprised to find
that when he requested me to say what I should prefer, I mentioned only
some religious and instructive works. I pretended to devote myself
assiduously to study, and I thus gave him convincing proof of the moral
reformation he was so anxious to bring about. It was nothing, however,
but rank hypocrisy--I blush to confess it. Instead of studying, when
alone I did nothing but curse my destiny. I lavished the bitterest
execrations on my prison, and the tyrants who detained me there. If I
ceased for a moment from these lamentations, it was only to relapse
into the tormenting remembrance of my fatal and unhappy love. Manon's
absence--the mystery in which her fate was veiled--the dread of never
again beholding her; these formed the subject of my melancholy
thoughts. I fancied her in the arms of G---- M----. Far from
imagining that he could have been brute enough to subject her to the
same treatment to which I was condemned, I felt persuaded that he had
only procured my removal, in order that he might possess her in
undisturbed enjoyment.
"Oh! how miserable were the days and nights I thus passed! They seemed
to be of endless duration. My only hope of escape now, was in
hypocrisy; I scrutinised the countenance, and carefully marked every
observation that fell from the governor, in order to ascertain what he
really thought of me; and looking on him as the sole arbiter of my
future fate, I made it my study to win, if possible, his favour. I
soon had the satisfaction to find that I was firmly established in his
good graces, and no longer doubted his disposition to befriend me.
"I, one day, ventured to ask him whether my liberation depended on him.
He replied that it was not altogether in his hands, but that he had no
doubt that on his representation M. G---- M----, at whose instance the
lieutenant-general of police had ordered me to be confined, would
consent to my being set at liberty. 'May I flatter myself,' rejoined
I, in the mildest tone, 'that he will consider two months, which I have
now spent in this prison, as a sufficient atonement?' He offered to
speak to him, if I wished it. I implored him without delay to do me
that favour.
"He told me two days afterwards that G---- M---- was so sensibly
affected by what he had heard, that he not only was ready to consent to
my liberation, but that he had even expressed a strong desire to become
better acquainted with me, and that he himself purposed to pay me a
visit in prison. Although his presence could not afford me much
pleasure, I looked upon it as a certain prelude to my liberation.
"He accordingly came to St. Lazare. I met him with an air more grave
and certainly less silly than I had exhibited at his house with Manon.
He spoke reasonably enough of my former bad conduct. He added, as if to
excuse his own delinquencies, that it was graciously permitted to the
weakness of man to indulge in certain pleasures, almost, indeed,
prompted by nature, but that dishonesty and such shameful practices
ought to be, and always would be, inexorably punished.
"I listened to all he said with an air of submission, which quite
charmed him. I betrayed no symptoms of annoyance even at some jokes in
which he indulged about my relationship with Manon and Lescaut, and
about the little chapels of which he supposed I must have had time to
erect a great many in St. Lazare, as I was so fond of that occupation.
But he happened, unluckily both for me and for himself, to add, that he
hoped Manon had also employed herself in the same edifying manner at
the Magdalen. Notwithstanding the thrill of horror I felt at the sound
of the name, I had still presence of mind enough to beg, in the
gentlest manner, that he would explain himself. 'Oh! yes,' he replied,
'she has been these last two months at the Magdalen learning to be
prudent, and I trust she has improved herself as much there, as you
have done at St. Lazare!'
"If an eternal imprisonment, or death itself, had been presented to my
view, I could not have restrained the excitement into which this
afflicting announcement threw me. I flung myself upon him in so
violent a rage that half my strength was exhausted by the effort. I
had, however, more than enough left to drag him to the ground, and
grasp him by the throat. I should infallibly have strangled him, if
his fall, and the half-stifled cries which he had still the power to
utter, had not attracted the governor and several of the priests to my
room. They rescued him from my fury.
"I was, myself, breathless and almost impotent from rage. 'Oh God!' I
cried--'Heavenly justice! Must I survive this infamy?' I tried again
to seize the barbarian who had thus roused my indignation--they