Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/113



was not long in discovering that he had been duped. I do not know whether he took any steps to find us that very evening; but his influence was great enough to prevent his efforts to trace us from remaining long without result; while we were imprudent enough on our side to trust too much to the vast extent of Paris and the distance of our quarter of it from that in which he resided. Not only did he obtain full information as to our whereabouts and our affairs for the time being, but he found out also who I was, the life I had been leading in Paris, Manon's former intrigue with B, and the way in which she had deceived him—in a word, all the scandalous portions of our history.

He thereupon decided to have us arrested and treated less as criminals than as arrant libertines. We were still in bed when an Agent of Police entered our room, with half a dozen Guards. They first seized our, or rather, M. de G M's, money, and, having roughly compelled us to rise, led us to the door, where we found two coaches, into one of which poor Manon was forced without any explanation, and driven away, while I was taken in the other to St. Lazare. The despair which such a reverse of for-