Previous  - next

with some generous old dame. This was just as little to my
taste, for it would necessarily have rendered me unfaithful to
Manon.

"I mentioned play as the easiest scheme, and the most suitable
to my present situation. He admitted that play certainly was a
resource, but that it was necessary to consider the point well.
`Mere play,' said he, `with its ordinary chances, is the certain
road to ruin; and as for attempting, alone and without an ally,
to employ the little means an adroit man has for correcting the
vagaries of luck, it would be too dangerous an experiment.'
There was, he stated, a third course, which was to enter into
what he called a partnership; but he feared his confederates
would consider my youth an objection to my admittance. He,
however, promised to use his influence with them; and, what was
more than I expected at his hands, he said that he would supply
me with a little money whenever I had pressing occasion for any.
The only favour I then asked of him was to say nothing to Manon
of the loss I had experienced, nor of the subject of our
conversation.

"I certainly derived little comfort from my visit to Lescaut; I
felt even sorry for having confided my secret to him: not a
single thing had he done for me that I might not just as well
have done for myself, without troubling him; and I could not help
dreading that he would violate his promise to keep the secret
from Manon. I had also reason to apprehend, from his late
avowals, that he might form the design of making use of her for
his own vile purposes, or at least of advising her to quit me for
some happier and more wealthy lover. This idea brought in its
train a thousand reflections, which had no other effect than to
torment me, and throw me again into the state of despair in which
I had passed the morning. It occurred to me, more than once, to
write to my father; and to pretend a new reformation, in order to
obtain some pecuniary assistance from him; but I could not forget
that, notwithstanding all his natural love and affection for me,
he had shut me up for six months in a confined room for my first
transgression; and I was certain that, after the scandalous
sensation caused by my flight from St. Sulpice, he would be sure
to treat me with infinitely more rigour now.

"At length, out of this chaos of fancies came an idea that all
at once restored ease to my mind, and which I was surprised at
not having hit upon sooner; this was, to go again to my friend
Tiberge, in whom I might be always sure of finding the same
unfailing zeal and friendship. There is nothing more
glorious--nothing that does more honour to true virtue, than the
confidence with which one approaches a friend of tried integrity;
no apprehension, no risk of unkind repulse: if it be not always
in his power to afford the required succour, one is sure at least
of meeting kindness and compassion. The heart of the poor
supplicant, which remains impenetrably closed to the rest of the

Previous  - next