Manon Lescaut
prevented me. My despair--my cries--my tears, exceeded all belief: I
raved in so incoherent a manner that all the bystanders, who were
ignorant of the cause, looked at each other with as much dread as
surprise.
"G---- M---- in the meantime adjusted his wig and cravat, and in his
anger at having been so ill-treated, ordered me to be kept under more
severe restraint than before, and to be punished in the manner usual
with offenders in St. Lazare. 'No, sir!' said the governor, 'it is not
with a person of his birth that we are in the habit of using such means
of coercion; besides, he is habitually so mild and well-conducted, that
I cannot but think you must have given provocation for such excessive
violence.' This reply disconcerted G---- M---- beyond measure and he
went away, declaring that he knew how to be revenged on the governor,
as well as on me, and everyone else who dared to thwart him.
"The Superior, having ordered some of the brotherhood to escort him out
of the prison, remained alone with me. He conjured me to tell him at
once what was the cause of the fracas.--'Oh, my good sir!' said I to
him, continuing to cry like a child, 'imagine the most horrible
cruelty, figure to yourself the most inhuman of atrocities--that is
what G---- M---- has had the cowardly baseness to perpetrate: he has
pierced my heart. Never shall I recover from this blow! I would
gladly tell you the whole circumstance,' added I, sobbing with grief;
'you are kind-hearted, and cannot fail to pity me.'
"I gave him, as briefly as I could, a history of my long-standing and
insurmountable passion for Manon, of the flourishing condition of our
fortunes previous to the robbery committed by our servants, of the
offers which G---- M---- had made to my mistress, of the understanding
they had come to, and the manner in which it had been defeated. To be
sure, I represented things to him in as favourable a light for us as
possible. 'Now you can comprehend,' continued I, 'the source of M.
G---- M----'s holy zeal for my conversion. He has had influence enough
to have me shut up here, out of mere revenge. That I can pardon; but,
my good sir, that is not all. He has taken from me my heart's blood:
he has had Manon shamefully incarcerated in the Magdalen; and had the
effrontery to announce it to me this day with his own lips. In the
Magdalen, good sir! Oh heavens! my adorable mistress, my beloved Manon,
a degraded inmate of the Hospital! How shall I command strength of
mind enough to survive this grief and shame!'
"The good Father, seeing me in such affliction, endeavoured to console
me. He told me that he had never understood my history, as I just now
related it; he had of course known that I led a dissolute life, but he
had imagined that M. G---- M----'s interest about me was the result of
his esteem and friendship for my family; that it was in this sense he
had explained the matter to him; that what I had now told him should
assuredly produce a change in my treatment, and that he had no doubt
but the accurate detail which he should immediately transmit to the
lieutenant-general of police would bring about my liberation.
"He then enquired why I had never thought of informing my family of
what had taken place, since they had not been instrumental to my
incarceration. I satisfactorily answered this by stating my
unwillingness to cause my father pain, or to bring upon myself the
humiliation of such an exposure. In the end, he promised to go
directly to the lieutenant-general of police if it were only, said he,
to be beforehand with M. G---- M----, who went off in such a rage, and
who had sufficient influence to make himself formidable.
"I looked for the good Father's return with all the suspense of a man
expecting sentence of death. It was torture to me to think of Manon at
the Magdalen. Besides the infamy of such a prison, I knew not how she
might be treated there; and the recollection of some particulars I had
formerly heard of this horrible place, incessantly renewed my misery.
Cost what it might, I was so bent upon relieving her by some means or
other, that I should assuredly have set fire to St. Lazare, if no other
mode of escape had presented itself.
"I considered what chances would remain to me if the lieutenant-general
still kept me in confinement. I taxed my ingenuity: I scanned every
imaginable gleam of hope--I could discover nothing that gave me any
prospect of escape, and I feared that I should experience only more
rigid confinement, if I made an unsuccessful attempt. I thought of
some friends from whom I might hope for aid, but then, how was I to
make them aware of my situation? At length I fancied that I had hit
upon a plan so ingenious, as to offer a fair probability of success. I
postponed the details of its arrangement until after the Superior's
return, in case of his having failed in the object of his visit.
"He soon arrived: I did not observe upon his countenance any of those
marks of joy that indicate good news. 'I have spoken,' said he, 'to
the lieutenant-general of police, but I was too late, M. G---- M----
went straight to him after quitting us, and so prejudiced him against
you, that he was on the point of sending me fresh instructions to
subject you to closer confinement.
"'However, when I let him know the truth of your story, he reconsidered
the matter, and, smiling at the incontinence of old G---- M----, he
said it would be necessary to keep you here for six months longer, in
order to pacify him; the less to be lamented,' he added, 'because your
morals would be sure to benefit by your residence here. He desired
that I would show you every kindness and attention, and I need not
assure you that you shall have no reason to complain of your treatment.'
"This speech of the Superior's was long enough to afford me time to
form a prudent resolution. I saw that by betraying too strong an
impatience for my liberty, I should probably be upsetting all my
projects. I acknowledged to him, that, as it was necessary to me to
remain, it was an infinite comfort to know that I possessed a place in
his esteem. I then requested, and with unaffected sincerity, a favour,
which could be of no consequence to others, and which would contribute
much to my peace of mind; it was to inform a friend of mine, a devout
clergyman, who lived at St. Sulpice, that I was at St. Lazare, and to
permit me occasionally to receive his visits.
"This was of course my friend Tiberge; not that I could hope from him
the assistance necessary for effecting my liberty; but I wished to make
him the unconscious instrument of my designs. In a word, this was my
project: I wished to write to Lescaut, and to charge him and our common
friends with the task of my deliverance. The first difficulty was to
have my letter conveyed to him: this should be Tiberge's office.
However, as he knew him to be Manon's brother, I doubted whether he
would take charge of this commission. My plan was to enclose my letter
to Lescaut in another to some respectable man of my acquaintance,
begging of him to transmit the first to its address without delay; and
as it was necessary that I should have personal communication with
Lescaut, in order to arrange our proceedings, I told him to call on me
at St. Lazare, and assume the name of my eldest brother, as if he had
come to Paris expressly to see me. I postponed till our meeting all
mention of the safest and most expeditious course I intended to suggest
for our future conduct. The governor informed Tiberge of my wish to
see him. This ever-faithful friend had not so entirely lost sight of
me as to be ignorant of my present abode, and it is probable that, in
his heart, he did not regret the circumstance, from an idea that it
might furnish the means of my moral regeneration. He lost no time in
paying me the desired visit."
VI
It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion; and how it
braves the nature and value of things, by this--that the speaking in a
perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love.--BACON.
"My interview with Tiberge was of the most friendly description. I saw
that his object was to discover the present temper of my mind. I
opened my heart to him without any reserve, except as to the mere point
of my intention of escaping. 'It is not from such a friend as you,'
said I, 'that I can ever wish to dissemble my real feelings. If you
flattered yourself with a hope that you were at last about to find me
grown prudent and regular in my conduct, a libertine reclaimed by the
chastisements of fortune, released alike from the trammels of love, and
the dominion that Manon wields over me, I must in candour say, that you
deceive yourself. You still behold me, as you left me four months ago,
the slave--if you will, the unhappy slave--of a passion, from which I
now hope, as fervently and as confidently as I ever did, to derive
eventually solid comfort.'
"He answered, that such an acknowledgment rendered me utterly
inexcusable; that it was no uncommon case to meet sinners who allowed
themselves to be so dazzled with the glare of vice as to prefer it
openly to the true splendour of virtue; they were at least deluded by
the false image of happiness, the poor dupes of an empty shadow; but to
know and feel as I did, that the object of my attachment was only
calculated to render me culpable and unhappy, and to continue thus
voluntarily in a career of misery and crime, involved a contradiction
of ideas and of conduct little creditable to my reason.
"'Tiberge,' replied I, 'it is easy to triumph when your arguments are
unopposed. Allow me to reason for a few moments in my turn. Can you
pretend that what you call the happiness of virtue is exempt from
troubles, and crosses, and cares? By what name will you designate the
dungeon, the rack, the inflections and tortures of tyrants? Will you
say with the Mystics[1] that the soul derives pleasure from the
torments of the body? You are not bold enough to hold such a
doctrine--a paradox not to be maintained. This happiness, then, that
you prize so much, has a thousand drawbacks, or is, more properly
speaking, but a tissue of sufferings through which one hopes to attain
felicity. If by the power of imagination one can even derive pleasure
from these sufferings, hoping that they may lead to a happy end, why,
let me ask, do you deem my conduct senseless, when it is directed by
precisely the same principle? I love Manon: I wade through sorrow and
suffering in order to attain happiness with her. My path is one indeed
of difficulties, but the mere hope of reaching the desired goal makes
it easy and delightful; and I shall think myself but too bountifully
repaid by one moment of her society, for all the troubles I encounter
in my course. There appears therefore no difference between us, or, if
there be any, it is assuredly in my favour; for the bliss I hope for is
near and tangible, yours is far distant, and purely speculative. Mine
is of the same kind as my sufferings, that is to say, evident to my
senses; yours is of an incomprehensible nature, and only discernible
through the dim medium of faith.'
"Tiberge appeared shocked by my remarks. He retired two or three paces
from me, while he said, in the most serious tone, that my argument was
not only a violation of good sense, but that it was the miserable
sophistry of irreligion; 'for the comparison,' he added, 'of the
pitiful reward of your sufferings with that held out to us by the
divine revelation, is the essence of impiety and absurdity combined.'
"'I acknowledge,' said I, 'that the comparison is not a just one, but
my argument does not at all depend upon it. I was about to explain
what you consider a contradiction--the persevering in a painful