Manon Lescaut
recognising my person.
"I had not the remotest suspicion of her presence. It is well known
that in these places there are private seats for ladies, where they
remain screened by a curtain. I returned to St. Sulpice covered with
honours and congratulations. It was six in the evening. The moment I
returned, a lady was announced, who desired to speak with me. I went
to meet her. Heavens! what a surprise!
"It was Manon. It was she indeed, but more bewitching and brilliant
than I had ever beheld her. She was now in her eighteenth year. Her
beauty beggars all description. The exquisite grace of her form, the
mild sweetness of expression that animated her features, and her
engaging air, made her seem the very personification of love. The
vision was something too perfect for human beauty.
"I stood like one enchanted at beholding her. Unable to divine the
object of her visit, I waited trembling and with downcast looks until
she explained herself. At first, her embarrassment was equal to mine;
but, seeing that I was not disposed to break silence, she raised her
hand to her eyes to conceal a starting tear, and then, in a timid tone,
said that she well knew she had justly earned my abhorrence by her
infidelity; but that if I had ever really felt any love for her, there
was not much kindness in allowing two long years to pass without
enquiring after her, and as little now in seeing her in the state of
mental distress in which she was, without condescending to bestow upon
her a single word. I shall not attempt to describe what my feelings
were as I listened to this reproof.
"She seated herself. I remained standing, with my face half turned
aside, for I could not muster courage to meet her look. I several
times commenced a reply without power to conclude it. At length I made
an effort, and in a tone of poignant grief exclaimed: 'Perfidious
Manon! perfidious, perfidious creature!' She had no wish, she repeated
with a flood of tears, to attempt to justify her infidelity. 'What is
your wish, then?' cried I. 'I wish to die,' she answered, 'if you will
not give me back that heart, without which it is impossible to endure
life.' 'Take my life too, then, faithless girl!' I exclaimed, in vain
endeavouring to restrain my tears; 'take my life also! it is the sole
sacrifice that remains for me to make, for my heart has never ceased to
be thine.'
"I had hardly uttered these words, when she rose in a transport of joy,
and approached to embrace me. She loaded me with a thousand caresses.
She addressed me by all the endearing appellations with which love
supplies his votaries, to enable them to express the most passionate
fondness. I still answered with affected coldness; but the sudden
transition from a state of quietude, such as that I had up to this
moment enjoyed, to the agitation and tumult which were now kindled in
my breast and tingled through my veins, thrilled me with a kind of
horror, and impressed me with a vague sense that I was about to undergo
some great transformation, and to enter upon a new existence.
"We sat down close by each other. I took her hand within mine, 'Ah!
Manon,' said I, with a look of sorrow, 'I little thought that love like
mine could have been repaid with treachery! It was a poor triumph to
betray a heart of which you were the absolute mistress--whose sole
happiness it was to gratify and obey you. Tell me if among others you
have found any so affectionate and so devoted? No, no! I believe
nature has cast few hearts in the same mould as mine. Tell me at least
whether you have ever thought of me with regret! Can I have any
reliance on the duration of the feeling that has brought you back to me
today? I perceive too plainly that you are infinitely lovelier than
ever: but I conjure you by all my past sufferings, dearest Manon, to
tell me--can you in future be more faithful?'
"She gave me in reply such tender assurances of her repentance, and
pledged her fidelity with such solemn protestations and vows, that I
was inexpressibly affected. 'Beauteous Manon,' said I, with rather a
profane mixture of amorous and theological expressions, 'you are too
adorable for a created being. I feel my heart transported with
triumphant rapture. It is folly to talk of liberty at St. Sulpice.
Fortune and reputation are but slight sacrifices at such a shrine! I
plainly foresee it: I can read my destiny in your bright eyes; but what
abundant recompense shall I not find in your affections for any loss I
may sustain! The favours of fortune have no influence over me: fame
itself appears to me but a mockery; all my projects of a holy life were
wild absurdities: in fact, any joys but those I may hope for at your
side are fit objects of contempt. There are none that would not vanish
into worthlessness before one single glance of thine!'
"In promising her, however, a full remission of her past frailties, I
enquired how she permitted herself to be led astray by B----. She
informed me that having seen her at her window, he became passionately
in love with her; that he made his advances in the true style of a
mercantile cit;--that is to say, by giving her to understand in his
letter, that his payments would be proportioned to her favours; that
she had admitted his overtures at first with no other intention than
that of getting from him such a sum as might enable us to live without
inconvenience; but that he had so bewildered her with splendid
promises, that she allowed herself to be misled by degrees. She added,
that I ought to have formed some notion of the remorse she experienced,
by her grief on the night of our separation; and assured me that, in
spite of the splendour in which he maintained her, she had never known
a moment's happiness with him, not only, she said, because he was
utterly devoid of that delicacy of sentiment and of those agreeable
manners which I possessed, but because even in the midst of the
amusements which he unceasingly procured her, she could never shake off
the recollection of my love, or her own ingratitude. She then spoke of
Tiberge, and the extreme embarrassment his visit caused her. 'A
dagger's point,' she added, 'could not have struck more terror to my
heart. I turned from him, unable to sustain the interview for a
moment.'
"She continued to inform me how she had been apprised of my residence
at Paris, of the change in my condition, and of her witnessing my
examination at the Sorbonne. She told me how agitated she had been
during my intellectual conflict with the examiner; what difficulty she
felt in restraining her tears as well as her sighs, which were more
than once on the point of spurning all control, and bursting forth;
that she was the last person to leave the hall of examination, for fear
of betraying her distress, and that, following only the instinct of her
own heart, and her ardent desires, she came direct to the seminary,
with the firm resolution of surrendering life itself, if she found me
cruel enough to withhold my forgiveness.
"Could any savage remain unmoved by such proofs of cordial repentance
as those I had just witnessed? For my part, I felt at the moment that
I could gladly have given up all the bishoprics in Christendom for
Manon. I asked what course she would recommend in our present
emergency. 'It is requisite,' she replied, 'at all events, to quit the
seminary, and settle in some safer place.' I consented to everything
she proposed. She got into her carriage to go and wait for me at the
corner of the street. I escaped the next moment, without attracting
the porter's notice. I entered the carriage, and we drove off to a
Jew's. I there resumed my lay-dress and sword. Manon furnished the
supplies, for I was without a sou, and fearing that I might meet with
some new impediment, she would not consent to my returning to my room
at St. Sulpice for my purse. My finances were in truth wretchedly low,
and hers more than sufficiently enriched by the liberality of M. de
B---- to make her think lightly of my loss. We consulted together at
the Jew's as to the course we should now adopt.
"In order to enhance the sacrifice she had made for me of her late
lover, she determined to treat him without the least ceremony. 'I
shall leave him all his furniture,' she said; 'it belongs to him: but I
shall assuredly carry off, as I have a right to do, the jewels, and
about sixty thousand francs, which I have had from him in the last two
years. I have given him no control over me,' she added, 'so that we
may remain without apprehension in Paris, taking a convenient house,
where we shall live, oh how happily together!'
"I represented to her that, although there might be no danger for her,
there was a great deal for me, who must be sooner or later infallibly
recognised, and continually exposed to a repetition of the trials I had
before endured. She gave me to understand that she could not quit
Paris without regret. I had such a dread of giving her annoyance, that
there were no risks I would not have encountered for her sake.
However, we compromised matters by resolving to take a house in some
village near Paris, from whence it would be easy for us to come into
town whenever pleasure or business required it. We fixed on Chaillot,
which is at a convenient distance. Manon at once returned to her
house, and I went to wait for her at a side-gate of the garden of the
Tuileries.
"She returned an hour after, in a hired carriage, with a servant-maid,
and several trunks, which contained her dresses, and everything she had
of value.
"We were not long on our way to Chaillot. We lodged the first night at
the inn, in order to have time to find a suitable house, or at least a
commodious lodging. We found one to our taste the next morning.
"My happiness now appeared to be secured beyond the reach of fate.
Manon was everything most sweet and amiable. She was so delicate and
so unceasing in her attentions to me, that I deemed myself but too
bountifully rewarded for all my past troubles. As we had both, by this
time, acquired some experience, we discussed rationally the state of
our finances. Sixty thousand francs (the amount of our wealth) was not
a sum that could be expected to last our whole life; besides, we were
neither of us much disposed to control our expenses. Manon's chief
virtue assuredly was not economy, any more than it was mine. This was
my proposition. 'Sixty thousand francs,' said I, 'may support us for
ten years. Two thousand crowns a year will suffice, if we continue to
live at Chaillot. We shall keep up appearances, but live frugally. Our
only expense will be occasionally a carriage, and the theatres. We
shall do everything in moderation. You like the opera; we shall go
twice a week, in the season. As for play, we shall limit ourselves; so
that our losses must never exceed three crowns. It is impossible but
that in the space of ten years some change must occur in my family: my
father is even now of an advanced age; he may die; in which event I
must inherit a fortune, and we shall then be above all other fears.'
"This arrangement would not have been by any means the most silly act
of my life, if we had only been prudent enough to persevere in its
execution; but our resolutions hardly lasted longer than a month.
Manon's passion was for amusement; she was the only object of mine.
New temptations to expense constantly presented themselves, and far
from regretting the money which she sometimes prodigally lavished, I
was the first to procure for her everything likely to afford her
pleasure. Our residence at Chaillot began even to appear tiresome.
"Winter was approaching, and the whole world returning to town; the
country had a deserted look. She proposed to me to take a house in