Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/75

Rh to our house and to entertain them there at our expense. He dressed in the most costly style, drawing upon our purse for the means of doing so; and even saddled us with all his debts. Out of consideration for Manon, I closed my eyes to this tyranny, and went so far as to feign ignorance of the fact that every now and again he extorted considerable sums of money from her. It is true that when fortune favored him—for he was an ardent gamester—he was honorable enough to repay her part of what she had lent him. But our means were too limited to meet the demands of such reckless extravagance for any length of time, and I was on the point of expressing myself very emphatically to him on the subject, in order to rid ourselves of his importunities, when a most unfortunate accident saved me the trouble, by bringing in its train another calamity which impoverished us beyond all recovery.

One night we had slept in Paris, as we were in the habit of doing very frequently. The maid-servant, who, on these occasions, was left alone at Chaillot, came to me in the morning with the intelligence that our house had taken fire during the night, and that the flames had been extinguished with great difficulty. I asked her whether any damage had been done to our furniture. She replied that the crowd of strangers who had come to give assist-