Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/61

Rh I would have preferred the perusal of a page of St. Augustine, or a quarter of an hour of Christian meditation, to all the pleasures of the senses; without excepting those which could have been offered me by Manon. Yet one unhappy moment hurled me again over the precipice; and my downfall was all the more irreparable that, finding myself all at once at a depth as profound as that from which I had risen, the new disorders into which I plunged dragged me still further toward the bottom of the abyss.

I had passed nearly a year in Paris without making any inquiries as to the doings of Manon. It had cost me a severe struggle at first to do this violence to my feelings; but the ever-present counsels of Tiberge, and my own reflections, had enabled me to gain the victory over myself. The last few months had glided by so tranquilly that I believed myself to be on the point of forgetting forever that lovely but perfidious being. The time arrived when I had publicly to maintain a thesis in the School of Theology. I extended invitations to several persons of distinction to honor me by their presence. My name was thus spread abroad in all quarters of Paris; it reached the ears of my faithless mistress. She did not feel certain in her recognition of it, under the title of Abbé; but a lingering