Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/85

Rh sense of my own ingratitude. "Before all else," said I, "let me conjure you to tell me whether I may still regard you as my friend, after having so justly merited the loss of your affection and esteem?"

He replied in a tone of the utmost tenderness that nothing could make him renounce that title; that my very misfortunes, and—if I would permit him to say so—the errors and immorality of my conduct, had increased his affection for me; but that it was an affection mingled with the deepest pain—such as we feel for a beloved one whom we see tottering on the brink of ruin without being able to succor him.

We seated ourselves upon a bench.

"Alas!" I said to him, with a sigh that rose from the bottom of my heart: "Your compassion for me must indeed be measureless, my dear Tiberge, if you can assure me that it is equal to the misery I feel! I blush to lay it bare before you; for I confess that its cause is not altogether a glorious one; but its results are so sad that, even did you love me less than you do, you could not but be moved by them."

He begged me, as a proof of my friendship, to tell him unreservedly all that had happened to me since my flight from St. Sulpice. I complied, and, so far from deviat-