Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/89

Rh of being in want of it. Pleasure and diversion were necessities to her. She would never have cared to possess a penny, if enjoyments could have been obtained without spending one. She did not so much as concern herself to inquire into the extent of our resources, provided she could pass the day agreeably; so that, as she was neither excessively devoted to the card-table, nor capable of being dazzled by the ostentation of gross extravagance, nothing was easier than to satisfy her by providing her day by day with amusements to her taste.

But it was so much a matter of necessity with her to be thus engrossed in pleasure that there was no counting, without this, upon the turns of her humor and her inclinations. Although she loved me tenderly, and I alone, as she was eager to admit, could make her taste in all their sweetness the delights of love, I was yet almost convinced that her affection would not hold its own in face of apprehensions of a certain kind. She would have preferred me to all the world, as long as I was in possession of a fair fortune; but I had no doubt whatever but that she would desert me for some new B should I have nothing left to offer her but constancy and fidelity.

I resolved, therefore, to regulate my personal expenses so carefully that I should always be in a position to sup-