“I felt confident that it was Manon.  I approached.  I beheld a very pretty face, certainly, but alas, not hers.  The lady asked, in a voice that I had never before heard, whether she had the honour of speaking to the Chevalier des Grieux?  I answered, `That is my name.’ `I have a letter for you,’ said she, `which will tell you what has brought me here, and by what means I learned your name.’  I begged she would allow me a few moments to read it in an adjoining cafe.  She proposed to follow me, and advised me to ask for a private room, to which I consented. `Who is the writer of this letter?’ I enquired.  She referred me to the letter itself.

“I recognised Manon’s hand.  This is nearly the substance of the letter:  G——­ M——­ had received her with a politeness and magnificence beyond anything she had previously conceived.  He had loaded her with the most gorgeous presents.  She had the prospect of almost imperial splendour.  She assured me, however, that she could not forget me amidst all this magnificence; but that, not being able to prevail on G——­ M——­ to take her that evening to the play, she was obliged to defer the pleasure of seeing me; and that, as a slight consolation for the disappointment which she feared this might cause me, she had found a messenger in one of the loveliest girls in all Paris.  She signed herself, `Your loving and constant, Manon Lescaut.’

“There was something so cruel and so insulting in the letter, that, what between indignation and grief, I resolutely determined to forget eternally my ungrateful and perjured mistress.  I looked at the young woman who stood before me:  she was exceedingly pretty, and I could have wished that she had been sufficiently so to render me inconstant in my turn.  But there were wanting those lovely and languishing eyes, that divine gracefulness, that exquisite complexion, in fine, those innumerable charms which nature had so profusely lavished upon the perfidious Manon. `No, no,’ said I, turning away from her; `the ungrateful wretch who sent you knew in her heart that she was sending you on a useless errand.  Return to her; and tell her from me, to triumph in her crime, and enjoy it, if she can, without remorse.  I abandon her in despair, and, at the same time, renounce all women, who, without her fascination, are no doubt her equals in baseness and infidelity.’

“I was then on the point of going away, determined never to bestow another thought on Manon:  the mortal jealousy that was racking my heart lay concealed under a dark and sullen melancholy, and I fancied, because I felt none of those violent emotions which I had experienced upon former occasions, that I had shaken off my thraldom.  Alas!  I was even at that moment infinitely more the dupe of love, than of G——­ M——­ and Manon.