Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/77

Rh whether there were, indeed, no other resource left open to me, and, as I pondered, Providence mercifully inspired me with an idea which checked my despair. It would not be impossible, I thought, to conceal our loss from Manon; and by my own industry, or some stroke of good fortune, to gain sufficient means to maintain her comfortably and prevent her feeling any sense of want.

"Did I not calculate," said I, by way of consoling myself, "that twenty thousand crowns would suffice for all our needs for the next ten years? Well, let us suppose that those ten years have gone by, and that none of the changes I had hoped for have occurred in my family; what course should I adopt? I am scarcely prepared to say, it is true; but, what is there to prevent my doing now whatever I should do then? Are there not many persons now living in Paris who have neither my intelligence nor my natural endowments, and who yet owe their support to their talents, such as they are? Has not Providence," I continued, as I reflected on the different conditions of life, "ordered things with profound wisdom? The majority of the great and rich are fools—that fact is obvious to every one who knows anything of society. Now, the justice of this is admirable. If, to their riches, they added the possession of intelligence, they would be unduly happy, and the remainder of mankind unduly wretched. To the latter, therefore, are accorded superior physical and mental faculties as means of raising themselves above misery and poverty. Some of them gain a share of the wealth of the higher classes by ministering to their pleasures, and so making them their dupes. Others devote themselves to their instruction, and try to make worthy and upright citizens of them. It is rarely, in truth, that they succeed; but that is not the object contemplated by Divine wisdom. What they do succeed in accomplishing