Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/131

Rh pointments, and from cares? In what category, then, do you place the dungeon and the cross, all the horrors of torture and persecution at the hands of tyrants? Do you think, with the Mystics, that whatever torments the body is bliss for the soul? No; you would not venture to uphold so indefensible a paradox. This happiness, then, which you extol so highly, is mingled with innumerable ills; or, to speak more accurately, is but a tangled web of miseries, through which men struggle toward felicity. Now, granting that the force of imagination can transmute into joys these very evils themselves, from the fact that through them may be attained the coveted goal of happiness—why should you regard as contradictory and irrational an entirely similar spirit in the course that I pursue? I love Manon: I struggle onward, through countless sufferings, toward a life of happiness and peace at her side. The path which I tread is a thorny one; but the hope of reaching my goal sheds gladness on it all the way; and I should hold myself only too richly repaid, by one moment spent with her, for all the sorrows I am enduring to win her. It seems to me, therefore, that all considerations are equal, on your side and on mine; or, if there be any difference, it is rather in my favor—as the happiness for which I hope is near at hand, and the other is