The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux/Chapter 16

by L'Abbé Prévost

Chapter XVI.

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Manon was quietly reading when I entered the room; and I could not help admiring the singular character of the girl as displayed in this unconscious touch. So far from being startled, or showing the least timidity when she saw me, she merely betrayed such slight symptoms of surprise as are involuntarily called forth by the sudden appearance of a person supposed to be far away.

"Ah! It is you, my love!" she exclaimed, as she came forward to embrace me with her accustomed tenderness. "How rash you are! Who would have expected to see you to-day, and here, of all places?"

I freed myself from her arms, and instead of responding to her caresses, repulsed her with scorn, and drew back some paces from her. This proceeding on my part naturally disconcerted her. She remained standing in the same position, and gazed at me, while her cheeks flushed and then grew pale.

In my secret soul I was so overjoyed at seeing her once more, that, despite all my just reasons for indignation, I could scarcely summon up resolution to open my lips and upbraid her. Yet my heart was bleeding from the cruel wrong she had done me. I recalled it vividly to mind, that it might kindle my resentment, and I strove to make my eyes flash with another fire than that of love.

As I remained silent for some moments, and she gradually became aware of the excitement under which I was laboring, I noticed that she began to tremble, apparently from fear. This sight was more than I could bear.

"Ah, Manon!" I said to her tenderly, "false and inconstant Manon! Where shall my reproaches begin? I see you pale and trembling before me, and I am still so readily moved by the slightest pain you suffer, that I dread to distress you too deeply by my rebukes. But, Manon, believe me, my heart is pierced with anguish at your disloyalty. Such blows as this can be dealt a lover with only one object—and that, his death! This is the third time, Manon; too well have I counted them for it to be possible that I should forget! Now the hour has come for you to consider, once and for all, what your choice is to be; for my unhappy heart is no longer proof against treatment so cruel as this. I feel that it is even now succumbing, and almost breakhig with grief. I can bear no more," I added, sinking into a chair; "I have scarcely strength enough left to speak or to stand!"

She made me no reply, but, as soon as I was seated, she knelt down and, resting her head upon my knees, hid her face in my hands. In another instant I felt them moistened by her tears. Heaven only knows what were my emotions at that moment.

"Ah, Manon, Manon!" I sighed, "why give me tears now, at the eleventh hour, after you have robbed me of all that made life dear to me? You are feigning a grief you cannot feel. The greatest of your afflictions, I doubt not, is my presence, which has always been an irksome hindrance to your pleasures. Open your eyes; look, and see who I am; such tender tears as these are not shed, I am sure, for an unhappy wretch whom you have betrayed and cruelly forsaken!"

She covered my hands with kisses, but did not change her attitude.

"Inconstant Manon!" continued I, "faithless and ungrateful girl! What of your promises and of your vows? What of the love you swore to me this very day, thrice fickle and cruel one? Just Heaven! Is a perfidious woman to call you thus solemnly to witness, and then to mock at you like this? Is perjury then, to be rewarded, while faith and constancy are left in despair?"

My reflections were so bitter as I uttered these words, that in spite of myself they drew tears from my eyes. My broken voice betrayed to Manon the fact that I was weeping, and at last she spoke.

"I must indeed be guilty," she murmured sadly, "since it seems that I have caused you so much pain and distress; but may Heaven be my judge if I have been so wittingly, or if I have harbored any intention of becoming so!"

This declaration appeared to me so devoid alike of meaning and of candor, that I could not restrain a fierce outburst of indignation.

"Such base dissimulation as this," I cried, "only serves to show me more plainly than ever how false and shallow is your heart. At last your odious character stands revealed to me in its true light. Farewell, unworthy being!" I continued, rising to my feet; "from this time forth we are strangers. Rather would I die a hundred deaths than remain any longer in your toils! I, too, invite the retribution of Heaven if ever I honor you again with a single glance. Stay here with this last gallant of yours: give him your love; reserve your hatred for me! Renounce honor, renounce reason—do what you will; scorn and indifference are all that I can feel for you henceforth!"

This passionate outbreak so terrified Manon that she remained kneeling before the chair from which I had risen, and fixed her eyes upon my face with a piteous gaze, while she trembled from head to foot and seemed almost afraid to draw her breath. I advanced a few steps further towards the door, looking back at her over my shoulder as I went. But I must have been lost to all sense of humanity to have steeled my heart against the mute appeal of her lovely face. So far was I from being equal to such barbarity, that I recoiled suddenly to the opposite extreme, and, yielding to an unreflecting impulse, turned—nay, rather, flew back to her side. Folding her in my arms, I rained a hundred fond kisses on her lips, and besought her to forgive my angry words, confessing that I was a brutal wretch and utterly unworthy of the happiness of being loved by such an adorable woman as herself. Then, leading her to a chair, I in my turn fell upon my knees, and implored her to listen to me as I knelt before her. In that posture I expressed my contrition in a few reverent and tender words, such as only a devoted and impassioned lover can find; and begged her to be merciful and pronounce my pardon.

Throwing her arms about my neck, she said that it was she, rather, who must appeal to my generosity and forbearance to forget the distress which she had caused me; and, she added, she was beginning to see reason to fear that I would disapprove of what she had to tell me in self-justification.

"Justification!" I here broke in; "I ask for nothing of the sort from you. I approve of all that you have done. It is not for me to exact reasons for your conduct. I am only too well satisfied and happy as long as my dearest Manon does not cast me out of her heart. But," added I, forgetting for the moment the actual state of affairs, "all-powerful Manon—you who can at pleasure mete out to me joy or sorrow—now that I have propitiated you by my submission and by these evidences of my repentance, may I not be suffered to tell you of the misery and anguish to which I am a prey? May I not learn from your lips what my doom is to be to-day, and whether my sentence of death is to be irrevocably pronounced by your passing this night in my rival's arms?"

She pondered some moments before replying, and then, regaining her composure of manner, she said: "My dear Chevalier, had you expressed yourself as clearly as this at the outset, you would have saved yourself a great deal of agitation and spared me a very distressing scene. Had I known that jealousy alone was the source of all your grief, I would have relieved your mind by offering to follow you at once to the very ends of the earth. But I was under the impression that your annoyance was due to the letter I was forced to write you under G——— M———'s very eyes, and to the girl we sent with it. I thought that you might have regarded my letter as a piece of deliberate mockery, and, supposing the girl to have gone to you on my behalf, might have construed her errand as a declaration on my part that I intended to forsake you for G——— M———. It was this idea that so suddenly overwhelmed me with terror; for, innocent as I was, a moment's reflection served to show me that appearances were sadly against me. However," she continued, "I ask you to judge me after you have heard the true version of the matter from my lips."

She then related all that had occurred from the moment of her going to meet G——— M———, whom she had found awaiting her in the very room in which we were now sitting. The proudest princess on earth could not, in truth, have expected a more royal welcome than he had given her. He had himself conducted her through all the apartments of the house, which were furnished richly, but in admirable taste. In her boudoir he had counted out to her ten thousand francs, besides giving her a number of jewels, among which figured the pearl necklace and bracelets she had received once already as a present from his father. He had then led her into a large room which she had not seen before, where she found a sumptuous collation spread for her. She was waited upon by the new servants whom he had hired especially for her, and whom he now ordered to consider her as their mistress for the future. After that he had shown her the carriage, the horses, and all his other presents; and had finally proposed that they should have a game of cards to pass the time until supper was ready.

"I frankly own," continued Manon, "that I was dazzled by this magnificence. It seemed to me that it would be a thousand pities to cheat ourselves of all this wealth by running away from it and taking nothing with me but the money and the jewelry. Here, thought I, is a fortune, all ready made and waiting for us both; and there is nothing to prevent our living in luxury and ease at G——— M———'s expense. Instead, therefore, of suggesting that he should take me to the Comédie, I determined to sound him as to the sentiments he entertained towards you, and thus to ascertain what opportunities you and I should have of seeing one another in future, supposing that my scheme were to be carried into effect. I found him of a most accommodating disposition. He asked me what I thought of you, and whether I had not felt some regret at leaving you.

"I told him that you possessed so many amiable qualities, and had always treated me so well, that it was only natural that I should regard you with great esteem. He admitted that he had a high opinion of your merits, and would be very glad to count you among his friends. He questioned me as to the spirit in which I thought you would take my desertion of you, especially when it came to your knowledge that I was in his hands. I replied that our love was now an affair of such long standing that its first ardor had had time to cool a little; and that you were, besides, somewhat straitened for money, and probably would not regard the loss of me as a great misfortune—since it would relieve you of a burden which you could ill support.

"I added that I had been so sure of your taking the affair in good part, that I had felt no hesitation in telling you that I was coming to Paris on some business of my own; you had raised no objections, I told him; and, having occasion to come to town yourself, you had shown no great uneasiness when I parted from you.

"'If I thought,' he then said, 'that the Chevalier des Grieux were disposed to be on friendly terms with me, I should be the first to pay my respects to him and place myself at his service.'

"I assured him that, knowing your character as I did, I had no doubt that you would respond cordially to any advances on his part; especially, I added, if he were willing to assist you in extricating yourself from the pecuniary embarrassment in which you had become involved since you had been at variance with your family.

"He interrupted me to assure me that he would do anything in his power to serve you; and would even, if you felt inclined to engage in another love affair, procure you a charming mistress, whom he had deserted for my sake. I applauded this proposal warmly, in order to leave him absolutely no grounds for suspicion; and being now more determined than ever to put my scheme into execution, my one thought was as to how I could communicate it to you, for I was afraid that you might be needlessly alarmed when I failed to keep my appointment with you. It was with this object in view that I suggested to him that we should send you your new mistress this very evening, as that would furnish me with a pretext for writing to you. I was compelled to resort to this subterfuge because I saw no hope of his leaving me at liberty for a single moment. Laughing at my proposal, he called his servant, and asked him whether he could find his former mistress immediately, and then sent him off to look for her in every direction. G——— M——— was under the impression that she would have to go to Chaillot to see you; but I told him that, on leaving you, I had promised to rejoin you at the Comédie or, in case anything should prevent my going there, that you were to wait for me in a coach, at the end of the Rue Saint-André. It would be better, therefore, I said, to send your new mistress to you there, if only to prevent your dancing attendance there all night long.

"I told him, also, that it would be as well to write you a few words explaining this exchange, as you would otherwise be at a loss to understand it. He consented to this, but I was obliged to write in his presence, and I was very careful not to express myself too unguardedly in my letter.

"And now I have told you," continued Manon, "how it all came about. I am concealing nothing from you, either as to what I did, or as to what I intended to do. The young girl came; I thought her pretty; and as I had no doubt that my absence would distress you, most sincerely did I hope that she might serve to divert your melancholy for awhile; the constancy I expect from you being that of the heart alone.

"I should have been only too glad to send Marcel to you, had I been able to do so; but it was impossible for me to secure an opportunity of instructing him as to what I wished you to be told."

She brought her story to an end by telling me how embarrassed G——— M——— had been on receiving the note from M. de T———.

"He hesitated for some time," she said, "as to whether he ought to leave me, and went away assuring me that he would return very shortly. That is the reason why I cannot help feeling uneasy at your being here, and was so surprised when you came into the room."

I heard her tale very patiently, much as there was in it that was calculated to wound and mortify me; for her intention of being unfaithful to me was so clear that she had not even taken the trouble to disguise it from me. She could not hope that G——— M——— would leave her all night in vestal purity; and what torture there was for a lover in the thought of her contemplating any other alternative! Still, I considered that I had been partly to blame for her frailty, by having, in the first place, let her know the sentiments which G——— M——— entertained towards her, and then by having been weak enough to enter blindly into her rash project. Moreover, owing to a certain turn of mind, peculiar, perhaps, to myself, I was touched by the ingenuousness of her confession, and by the frank and artless manner in which she related even those details which were most unpalatable to me. "She sins without any malice of intention," I said to myself. "She is frivolous and imprudent, but right-minded and sincere." Add to this the fact that my love for her was in itself enough to blind me to all her faults, and that I was more than satisfied by the hope of carrying her away from my rival that very evening. Nevertheless, I could not restrain myself from saying:

"But what of to-night? With whom were you going to spend it?"

This question, which I asked in a sad tone, utterly disconcerted her. She attempted to reply, but could only falter out "buts" and "ifs," until, pitying her confusion, I interrupted her to say firmly that I expected her to leave the house with me at once.

"I shall do so willingly," she replied. "But you do not approve of my project, then?"

"What more can you ask," I exclaimed in response, "than that I should approve of all that you have done so far?"

"But surely you cannot object to our taking the money, at all events? It is my own; he gave it to me."

I advised her to relinquish everything, and to think only of making good our flight; for, though I had been with her barely half an hour, I was in terror lest G——— M——— might return at any moment. She begged so earnestly, however, for my consent to our not leaving empty-handed, that I thought it only fair to yield a little to her wishes, when she had yielded so much to mine.

While we were occupied in the preparations for our departure, I heard some one knocking at the street-door. I fully believed it to be G——— M———, and, in my desperation at this thought, I told Manon that if he made his appearance it would be to meet his death. Nor had I, indeed, as yet regained sufficient calmness to have been able to control myself had I seen him. Marcel, however, put an end to my suspense by bringing me a note which had been given him at the door for me. It was from M. de T———. He wrote that he was taking advantage of the absence of G——— M———, who had gone home to get some money for him, to tell me of an amusing idea that had occurred to him. It appeared to him, he went on to say, that I could not be more agreeably revenged on my rival than by regaling myself with the supper intended for him, and by sleeping that very night in the bed which he anticipated sharing with my mistress. There would be no difficulty in accomplishing this, proceeded M. de T———, if I could secure the services of three or four men daring enough to seize G——— M——— in the street, and trusty enough to keep him a close prisoner until the following day. He promised, for his own part, to detain him for another hour at least, on various pretexts which he was ready to meet him with on his return.

I showed this note to Manon, and explained the ruse by which I had succeeded in gaining access to her room. She was loud in her praises of the ingenuity of my plan, as well as of M. de T———'s, and we enjoyed a few moments' hearty laughter over them both. But, on my alluding to the latter as merely an excellent jest, she surprised me by declaring that she was delighted with the idea, and urging me quite seriously to carry it into effect. In vain did I ask her where she supposed that I was thus on a sudden to find men who could be relied upon to seize G——— M——— and keep him in safe custody. She said that we must try, at any rate, as M. de T——— vouched for our having still an hour at our disposal; while, to all my other objections, her only response was that I was playing the tyrant, and had no regard for her wishes. The project had caught her fancy so completely that nothing would content her but to see it put into execution.

"You shall take his place at supper," she repeated, again and agam, "you shall sleep in his bed, and bright and early to-morrow morning you shall make off with his mistress and his money. Ah, richly will you be revenged on both father and son!"

I finally yielded to her persuasions, though my heart was full of secret misgivings, which seemed to augur an unhappy ending to this affair. I went out, intending to ask two or three officers of the Guards, whose acquaintance I had made through Lescaut, to undertake the seizure of G——— M———I found only one of them at home; but he was an adventurous spirit, and had no sooner heard what I wanted done, than he assured me of success; only asking me to give him ten pistoles with which to pay three privates of the Guards whom he proposed to hire and lead himself.

I begged him to lose no time; and he mustered them in less than a quarter of an hour. In the meanwhile, I was waiting for him at his house; and as soon as he returned with his confederates, I led him myself to the corner of the street along which G——— M——— must necessarily pass on his way back to Manon. I instructed the Guardsman to do him no harm, but to keep him so closely confined until seven o'clock the next morning that I might be under no apprehension of his making his escape.

"My plan," said the officer, "is to take him to my own room, compel him to strip himself, and, perhaps, to sleep in my bed, while these three brave fellows and myself spend the night over a bottle and a pack of cards."

I remained with them until I saw G——— M——— approaching, and then withdrew into a dark recess a little further down the street, whence I could be a witness of the strange scene which was about to be enacted.

The Guardsman accosted him, pistol in hand, and gave him civilly to understand that he had no designs upon either his money or his life; but that unless he followed him without making the slightest difficulty or raising the faintest alarm, he would blow out his brains. G——— M——— seeing him backed up by three soldiers, and having, doubtless, a wholesome fear of the contents of the pistol, offered no resistance, and I saw him led away like a lamb.

I then hastened back to Manon; and, in order to prevent any suspicion on the part of the servants, I said to her as I entered the room that supper need not be kept waiting for M. de G——— M———, as some business had arisen which would detain him, much to his regret; and that he had asked me to come and make his excuses to her for his absence and to take supper with her; an honor of which the company of so fair a lady made me very sensible.

She seconded me very cleverly in my design, and we took our places at the table. We assumed an air of grave propriety before the servants while they remained in the room to wait upon us; and when, at last, we had dismissed them, we passed one of the most delightful evenings of our lives. I gave Marcel secret orders to find a coach and to tell the driver to be at the door before six o'clock the next morning.

Towards midnight I pretended to take my leave of Manon; but I was noiselessly let into the house again by Marcel, and was soon preparing to occupy G——— M———'s bed, as I had already usurped his place at table.