“We journeyed on as long as Manon’s strength would permit, that is to say, about six miles; for this incomparable creature, with her usual absence of selfishness, refused my repeated entreaties to stop.  Overpowered at length by fatigue, she acknowledged the utter impossibility of proceeding farther.  It was already night:  we sat down in the midst of an extensive plain, where we could not even find a tree to shelter us.  Her first care was to dress my wound, which she had bandaged before our departure.  I, in vain, entreated her to desist from exertion:  it would have only added to her distress if I had refused her the satisfaction of seeing me at ease and out of danger, before her own wants were attended to.  I allowed her therefore to gratify herself, and in shame and silence submitted to her delicate attentions.

“But when she had completed her tender task, with what ardour did I not enter upon mine!  I took off my clothes and stretched them under her, to render more endurable the hard and rugged ground on which she lay.  I protected her delicate hands from the cold by my burning kisses and the warmth of my sighs.  I passed the livelong night in watching over her as she slept, and praying Heaven to refresh her with soft and undisturbed repose. `You can bear witness, just and all-seeing God! to the fervour and sincerity of those prayers, and Thou alone knowest with what awful rigour they were rejected.’

“You will excuse me, if I now cut short a story which it distresses me beyond endurance to relate.  It is, I believe, a calamity without parallel.  I can never cease to deplore it.  But although it continues, of course, deeply and indelibly impressed on my memory, yet my heart seems to shrink within me each time that I attempt the recital.

“We had thus tranquilly passed the night.  I had fondly imagined that my beloved mistress was in a profound sleep, and I hardly dared to breathe lest I should disturb her.  As day broke, I observed that her hands were cold and trembling; I pressed them to my bosom in the hope of restoring animation.  This movement roused her attention, and making an effort to grasp my hand, she said, in a feeble voice, that she thought her last moments had arrived.

“I, at first, took this for a passing weakness, or the ordinary language of distress; and I answered with the usual consolations that love prompted.  But her incessant sighs, her silence, and inattention to my enquiries, the convulsed grasp of her hands, in which she retained mine, soon convinced me that the crowning end of all my miseries was approaching.

“Do not now expect me to attempt a description of my feelings, or to repeat her dying expressions.  I lost her—­I received the purest assurances of her love even at the very instant that her spirit fled.  I have not nerve to say more upon this fatal and disastrous event.

“My spirit was not destined to accompany Manon’s.  Doubtless, Heaven did not as yet consider me sufficiently punished, and therefore ordained that I should continue to drag on a languid and joyless existence.  I willingly renounced every hope of leading a happy one.