Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/184

188 he had made her dazzling promises of wealth and of lifelong devotion on his part, if she would follow him to his home beyond the Alps. She had come back to Chaillot, she said, fully determined to inform me of the whole adventure; but it had occurred to her that we might derive some amusement from the affair; and this fancy afforded such irresistible attraction to her mind that she had replied very graciously to the Italian prince's letter, and granted him permission to pay her a visit. She had enjoyed the further diversion, she added, of making me fall in with the plot without allowing me to have the remotest suspicion of what was going on.

I said nothing about the enlightenment I had obtained from another source; and, intoxicated as I was by this triumph of love, I heartily applauded all that she had done.