“We all left the prison together, without the mention of Manon’s name.  I dared not in their presence speak of her to the turnkeys.  Alas! all my entreaties in her favour would have been useless.  The cruel sentence upon Manon had arrived at the same time as the warrant for my discharge.  The unfortunate girl was conducted in an hour after to the Hospital, to be there classed with some other wretched women, who had been condemned to the same punishment.

“My father having forced me to accompany him to the house where he was residing, it was near six o’clock before I had an opportunity of escaping his vigilance.  In returning to Le Chatelet, my only wish was to convey some refreshments to Manon, and to recommend her to the attention of the porter; for I had no hope of being permitted to see her; nor had I, as yet, had time to reflect on the best means of rescuing her.

“I asked for the porter.  I had won his heart, as much by my liberality to him, as by the mildness of my manner; so that, having a disposition to serve me, he spoke of Manon’s sentence as a calamity which he sincerely regretted, since it was calculated to mortify me.  I was at first unable to comprehend his meaning.  We conversed for some minutes without my understanding him.  At length perceiving that an explanation was necessary, he gave me such a one, as on a former occasion I wanted courage to relate to you, and which, even now, makes my blood curdle in my veins to remember.

XI

Alack! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily that we think on other people’s sufferings; but when the hour of trouble comes, said Jeanie Deans.—­Walter Scott.

“Never did apoplexy produce on mortal a more sudden or terrific effect than did the announcement of Manon’s sentence upon me.  I fell prostrate, with so intense a palpitation of the heart, that as I swooned I thought that death itself was come upon me.  This idea continued even after I had been restored to my senses.  I gazed around me upon every part of the room, then upon my own paralysed limbs, doubting, in my delirium, whether I still bore about me the attributes of a living man.  It is quite certain that, in obedience to the desire I felt of terminating my sufferings, even by my own hand, nothing could have been to me more welcome than death at that moment of anguish and despair.  Religion itself could depict nothing more insupportable after death than the racking agony with which I was then convulsed.  Yet, by a miracle, only within the power of omnipotent love, I soon regained strength enough to express my gratitude to Heaven for restoring me to sense and reason.  My death could have only been a relief and blessing to myself; whereas Manon had occasion for my prolonged existence, in order to deliver her—­to succour her—­to avenge her wrongs:  I swore to devote that existence unremittingly to these objects.