rtunately happened to have about me. I showed
him my purse, and explained to him my misfortune and my fears, and then
asked him whether I had any alternative between starvation and blowing
out my brains in despair. He coolly replied that suicide was the
resource of fools. As to dying of want, there were hundreds of men of
genius who found themselves reduced to that state when they would not
employ their talents; that it was for myself to discover what I was
capable of doing, and he told me to reckon upon his assistance and his
advice in any enterprise I might undertake.

"'Vague enough, M. Lescaut!' said I to him: 'my wants demand a more
speedy remedy; for what am I to say to Manon?' 'Apropos of Manon,'
replied he, 'what is it that annoys you about her? Cannot you always
find in her wherewithal to meet your wants, when you wish it? Such a
person ought to support us all, you and me as well as herself.' He cut
short the answer which I was about to give to such unfeeling and brutal
impertinence, by going on to say, that before night he would ensure me
a thousand crowns to divide between us, if I would only follow his
advice; that he was acquainted with a nobleman, who was so liberal in
affairs of the kind, that he was certain he would not hesitate for a
moment to give the sum named for the favours of such a girl as Manon.

"I stopped him. 'I had a better opinion of you,' said I; 'I had
imagined that your motive for bestowing your friendship upon me was
very different indeed from the one you now betray.' With the greatest
effrontery he acknowledged that he had been always of the same mind,
and that his sister having once sacrificed her virtue, though it might
be to the man she most loved, he would never have consented to a
reconciliation with her, but with the hope of deriving some advantage
from her past misconduct.

"It was easy to see that we had been hitherto his dupes.
Notwithstanding the disgust with which his proposition inspired me,
still, as I felt that I had occasion for his services, I said, with
apparent complacency, that we ought only to entertain such a plan as a
last resource. I begged of him to suggest some other.

"He proposed to me to turn my youth and the good looks nature had
bestowed upon me to some account, by establishing a liaison with some
generous old dame. This was just as little to my taste, for it would
necessarily have rendered me unfaithful to Manon.

"I mentioned play as the ea