“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 Paris.  I did not approve of this; but, in order partly at least to satisfy her, I said that we might hire furnished apartments, and that we might sleep there whenever we were late in quitting the assembly, whither we often went; for the inconvenience of returning so late to Chaillot was her excuse for wishing to leave it.  We had thus two dwellings, one in town and the other in the country.  This change soon threw our affairs into confusion, and led to two adventures, which eventually caused our ruin.

“Manon had a brother in the Guards.  He unfortunately lived in the very street in which we had taken lodgings.  He one day recognised his sister at the window, and hastened over to us.  He was a fellow of the rudest manners, and without the slightest principle of honour.  He entered the room swearing in the most horrible way; and as he knew part of his sister’s history, he loaded her with abuse and reproaches.