Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/99

Rh lead me into some fatal mistake; some fine day I should breathe my last when I thought to heave only a love-sigh. I adore you; rest assured of that; but leave the management of our fortunes to me for awhile. Woe be to him who gets entangled in my meshes! for I seek only to bring wealth and happiness to my Chevalier.

"My brother will give you tidings of your Manon, and will tell you how she wept at the necessity of leaving you."

It would be difficult for me to describe my state of mind after the perusal of this letter; for to this day I do not know in what category to place the feelings that then swept over me. It was one of those mental crises which stand out, separate and distinct, from all others in a man's life, to which his previous experience supplies no parallel, and the very conception of which it is impossible to convey to other minds, as they—from the nature of the case—can have no clue to guide them to it. Nor is it easy to analyze them clearly to one's self: for, being, as they are, solitary instances of their kind, they can be brought into relation with nothing in the memory, and cannot even be compared with any known feeling.

Of whatever nature my emotions may have been, however, among them were certainly grief, vexation, jealousy,