of love could purify so sharply every emotion but that of pity
too profound for words. He wondered if his father had loved with such a
devotion of self-destruction as had inspired des Grieux. It was strange
himself should have been so greatly moved by a story of love at the
moment when he was making ready to enter the world. He had not thought
of love during all the time he had been up at Oxford. Now he went back
in memory to the days when Lily had the power to shake his soul, even as
the soul of des Grieux had been shaken in that inn-yard of Amiens, when
coming by the coach from Arras he first beheld Manon. How trivial had
been Lily's infidelity compared with Manon's: how shallow had been his
own devotion beside the Chevalier's. But the love of des Grieux for
Manon was beyond the love of ordinary youth. The Abbe by his art had
transmuted a wild infatuation, a foolish passion for a wanton into
something above even the chivalry of the noblest lover of the Middle
Ages. It was beyond all tears, this tale; and the dry grief it now
exacted gave to Michael in some inexplicable way a knowledge of life
more truly than any book since Don Quixote. It was an academic tale,
too: it was told within the narrowest confines of the most rigid form.
There was not in this narrative one illegitimate device to excite an
easy compassion in the reader: it was literature of a quality marmoreal,
and it moved as only stone can move. The death of Manon in the
wilderness haunted him even as he sat here: almost he too could have
prostrated himself in humiliation before this tragedy.
"There is no story like it," said Michael to the sleek river. _N'exigez
point de moi que je vous decrive mes sentiments, ni que je vous rapporte
mes dernieres expressions._ And it was bought by an undergraduate for
half a crown because he wanted to stare like the peasant-folk. _C'est
une douzaine de filles de joie._ How really promising that illustration
must have looked: how the coin must have itched in his pocket: how
carefully he must have weighed the slimness of the book against his
modesty: how easy it had been to conceal behind those magazines.
But he could not sit here any longer reconstructing the shamefaced
curiosity of a dull young freshman, nor even, with so much to arrange
this last morning, could he continue to brood upon the woes of the
Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut. It was time to go and rouse
Lonsdale. Lonsdale had slept long enough in those
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