Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier Des Grieux.djvu/66

I would have preferred the perusal of a page of St. Augustine, or a quaiter of an hour of Christian meditation, to all the pleasures of the senses ; without excepting those which could have been offered me by Manon. Yet one unliappy moment hurled me again over the precipice ; and m}' downfall was all the more irreparable that, finding myself all at once at a depth as profound as that from which I had risen, the new disorders into which I plunged dragged me still further toward the bottom of the abyss. I had passed nearly a year in Paris without making any inquiries as to the doings of Manon. It had cost me a se- vere struggle at first to do this violence to my feelings ; but the ever-present counsels of Tiberge, and my own re- flections, had enabled me to gain the victoiy over myself. The last few months had glided by so tranquilly that I believed myself to be on the point of forgetting forever that lovely but perfidious being. The time arrived when I had publicly to maintain a thesis hi the School of The- ology. I extended invitations to several persons of dis- tinction to honor me by their presence. My name was thus spread abroad in all quarters of Paris ; it reached the ears of my faithless mistress. She did not feel certain in her recognition of it, imder the title of Abbe ; but a lingering