“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.