Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/114

118 tune as this can cause is to be fully appreciated only by those who have undergone a similar experience.

Our guards were so heartless as to deny me the privilege of embracing Manon, or even of saying a word of farewell to her. For a long while I remained in ignorance of what had become of her. It was perhaps fortunate for me that I did not know it at first; for so terrible a catastrophe would have cost me my reason, probably my life.

My hapless mistress was thus torn from me, and incarcerated in a place too horrible for me to name. What a fate was this for a being whose incomparable loveliness would have placed her on the proudest throne on earth, if all men had seen her as I saw her and loved her as I loved! She was not inhumanly treated there, but was imprisoned in a narrow cell, and condemned to perform an allotted task of work each day, as the requisite condition of obtaining an allowance of nauseous food. I did not learn these sad details until long afterwards, when I had myself undergone several months of severe and irksome penance. As my captors likewise refused to tell me where they were ordered to take me, I discovered what my fate was to be only when we reached the gates of St. Lazare. I would have welcomed death, at that moment, in preference to what I believed to be in store for me. I had terrible conceptions of the nature of this establishment. My