low
me a few moments to read it in an adjoining cafe. She proposed to
follow me, and advised me to ask for a private room, to which I
consented. 'Who is the writer of this letter?' I enquired. She
referred me to the letter itself.

"I recognised Manon's hand. This is nearly the substance of the
letter: G---- M---- had received her with a politeness and
magnificence beyond anything she had previously conceived. He had
loaded her with the most gorgeous presents. She had the prospect of
almost imperial splendour. She assured me, however, that she could not
forget me amidst all this magnificence; but that, not being able to
prevail on G---- M---- to take her that evening to the play, she was
obliged to defer the pleasure of seeing me; and that, as a slight
consolation for the disappointment which she feared this might cause
me, she had found a messenger in one of the loveliest girls in all
Paris. She signed herself, 'Your loving and constant, MANON LESCAUT.'

"There was something so cruel and so insulting in the letter, that,
what between indignation and grief, I resolutely determined to forget
eternally my ungrateful and perjured mistress. I looked at the young
woman who stood before me: she was exceedingly pretty, and I could have
wished that she had been sufficiently so to render me inconstant in my
turn. But there were wanting those lovely and languishing eyes, that
divine gracefulness, that exquisite complexion, in fine, those
innumerable charms which nature had so profusely lavished upon the
perfidious Manon. 'No, no,' said I, turning away from her; 'the
ungrateful wretch who sent you knew in her heart that she was sending
you on a useless errand. Return to her; and tell her from me, to
triumph in her crime, and enjoy it, if she can, without remorse. I
abandon her in despair, and, at the same time, renounce all women, who,
without her fascination, are no doubt her equals in baseness and
infidelity.'

"I was then on the point of going away, determined never to bestow
another thought on Manon: the mortal jealousy that was racking my heart
lay concealed under a dark and sullen melancholy, and I fancied,
because I felt none of those violent emotions which I had experienced
upon former occasions, that I had shaken off my thraldom. Alas! I was
even at that moment infinitely more the dupe of love, than of G----
M---- and Manon.

"The girl who had brought the letter, seeing me about to depart, asked
me wha