personal communication with Lescaut, in order to arrange our proceedings, I told him to call on me at St. Lazare, and assume the name of my eldest brother, as if he had come to Paris expressly to see me.  I postponed till our meeting all mention of the safest and most expeditious course I intended to suggest for our future conduct.  The governor informed Tiberge of my wish to see him.  This ever-faithful friend had not so entirely lost sight of me as to be ignorant of my present abode, and it is probable that, in his heart, he did not regret the circumstance, from an idea that it might furnish the means of my moral regeneration.  He lost no time in paying me the desired visit.

VI

It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion; and how it braves the nature and value of things, by this—­ that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in love.—­Bacon.

“My interview with Tiberge was of the most friendly description.  I saw that his object was to discover the present temper of my mind.  I opened my heart to him without any reserve, except as to the mere point of my intention of escaping. `It is not from such a friend as you,’ said I, `that I can ever wish to dissemble my real feelings.  If you flattered yourself with a hope that you were at last about to find me grown prudent and regular in my conduct, a libertine reclaimed by the chastisements of fortune, released alike from the trammels of love, and the dominion that Manon wields over me, I must in candour say, that you deceive yourself.  You still behold me, as you left me four months ago, the slave—­if you will, the unhappy slave—­of a passion, from which I now hope, as fervently and as confidently as I ever did, to derive eventually solid comfort.’

“He answered, that such an acknowledgment rendered me utterly inexcusable; that it was no uncommon case to meet sinners who allowed themselves to be so dazzled with the glare of vice as to prefer it openly to the true splendour of virtue; they were at least deluded by the false image of happiness, the poor dupes of an empty shadow; but to know and feel as I did, that the object of my attachment was only calculated to render me culpable and unhappy, and to continue thus voluntarily in a career of misery and crime, involved a contradiction of ideas and of conduct little creditable to my reason.

“`Tiberge,’ replied I, `it is easy to triumph when your arguments are unopposed.  Allow me to reason for a few moments in my turn.  Can you pretend that what you call the happiness of virtue is exempt from troubles, and crosses, and cares?  By what name will you designate the dungeon, the rack, the inflections and tortures of tyrants?  Will you say with the Mystics[1] that the soul derives pleasure from the torments of the body?  You are not bold enough to hold such a doctrine—­a paradox not to be maintained.  This happiness,