criber's note: Livres?] and then bids him good-bye. The
young man retires to find strength and forgetfulness in prayer.

When he returns to the parlour he finds Manon. She has also prayed
fervently, that God would pardon her and help her to win back her
lover's heart. A passionate scene ensues, in which Manon implores his
forgiveness and is at last successful, De Grieux opens his arms to her
and abandons his vocation.

The fourth act opens in the luxurious drawing-rooms of a great Paris
Hotel. Games of hazard and lively conversation are going on
everywhere. Manon arriving with de Grieux is joyously greeted by her
old friends. She coaxes her lover to try his luck at play and is
seconded by her cousin Lescaut, himself an inveterate gambler, who
intimates that fortune always favours a beginner. Guillot offers to
play with de Grieux, and truly fortune favours him. After a few turns,
in which Guillot loses heavily, the latter rises accusing his partner
of false play.

The Chevalier full of wrath is about to strike him, but the others hold
him back and Guillot escapes, vowing vengeance. He soon returns with
the police headed by the old Count de Grieux, to {455} whom he
denounces young de Grieux as a gambler and a cheat and points out Manon
as his accomplice. Old Count de Grieux allows his son to be arrested,
telling him he will soon be released. Poor Manon is seized by the
guards, though all the spectators, touched by her youth and beauty beg
for her release. The old Count says she only gets her deserts.

The last scene takes place on the highroad leading to Havre. Cousin
Lescaut meets de Grieux whom he had promised to try to save Manon from
penal servitude by effecting her escape. Unfortunately the soldiers he
employed had meanly deserted him, on hearing which de Grieux violently
upbraids him. Lescaut pacifies the desperate nobleman by saying that
he has thought of other means of rescuing Manon. Soon the waggons
conveying the convicts to their destination are heard approaching. One
of these waggons stops. Lescaut, accosting one of the soldiers in
charge hears that Manon is inside, dying. He begs that he may be
allowed to take a last farewell of his little cousin, and bribing the
man with money he succeeds in getting Manon out of the waggon,
promising to bring her to the nearest village in due time.

Manon sadly changed totters forward and finds herself clasped in her
lover's arms. For a little while