Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/82



, if anything, more ill at ease when I left Lescaut than I had been on going to see him. I even regretted that I had confided my secret to him. He had done nothing for me that I could not have obtained equally well without making the disclosure; and I was in mortal dread lest he should break the promise I had exacted from him of divulging nothing to Manon. I had reason to apprehend, moreover, from the sentiments which he had avowed, that he might decide to turn her to some profit—to use his own expression—by taking her from me, or, at any rate, by advising her to desert me and attach herself to a richer and more fortunate lover.

This led me into a train of reflections which resulted only in torturing my mind and renewing the despair to which I had been a prey that morning. An idea which suggested itself to me more than once, was to write to my father, leading him to beheve that I was again penitent and anxious to reform, and so to obtain some pecuniary assistance from him. But I had a very vivid recollection of the fact that, in spite of all his kindness, he had kept me a close prisoner for six months as a punishment for my first offence; and I had little doubt that after such a scandal as must have been caused by my flight from St. Sulpice, he would treat me with much greater severity.