Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/197

Rh of Paris, taking with me such few belongings as we had; and that early the following afternoon—which was the time appointed for their meeting—she would go into town, where, after receiving the presents from G M, she was to beg him as a special favor to take her to the Comédie. She was to carry to the theatre as much of the money as she could secrete about her person, entrusting the rest to our valet, whom she intended to have with her. He was the same man who had assisted her to escape from the Hôpital and was devotedly attached to us.

I was to be at the end of the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs with a hackney-coach, and, at about seven o'clock, was to leave it waiting there and make my way, under cover of the darkness, to the entrance of the Comédie. Manon promised to find some pretext for leaving her box for a few moments, and to seize the opportunity to come down and join me. The rest would be easy to manage. In an instant we should have leaped into the coach, and would be hurrying out of Paris by way of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which would take us in the direction of our new lodgings.

Wildly impracticable as was this project, we thought it admirably planned. As a matter of fact, we were guilty of the maddest imprudence in allowing ourselves to suppose that, even if it should meet with complete success, we could ever put ourselves beyond reach of pursuit. We risked all the consequences, however, with reckless temerity.