it is a positive advantage. Manon speaks very
little; and so much the better. Her "comely face and her fair bodie" (to
repeat once more a beloved quotation) speak for her to the ruin of her
lover and herself--to the age-long delectation of readers. On the other
hand, the whole speech is Des Grieux', and never was a monologue better
suited or justified. The worst of such things is usually that there are
in them all sorts of second thoughts of the author. There is none of
this littleness in the speech of Des Grieux. He is a gentle youth in the
very best sense of the term, and as we gather--not from anything he says
of himself, but from the general tenor--by no means a "wild gallant";
affectionate, respectful to his parents, altogether "douce," and,
indeed, rather (to start with) like Lord Glenvarloch in _The Fortunes of
Nigel_. He meets Manon (Prevost has had the wits to make her a little
older than her lover), and _actum est de_ both of them.

[Sidenote: The character of its heroine.]

But Manon herself? She talks (it has been said) very little, and it was
not necessary that she should talk much. If she had talked as Marianne
talks, we should probably hate her, unless, as is equally probable, we
ceased to take any interest in her. She is a girl not of talk but of
deeds: and her deeds are of course quite inexcusable. But still that
great and long unknown verse of Prior, which tells how a more harmless
heroine did various things--

As answered the end of her being created,

fits her, and the deeds create her in their process, according to the
wonderful magic of the novelist's art. Manon is not in the least a
Messalina; it is not what Messalina wanted that she wants at all, though
she may have no physical objection to it, and may rejoice in it when it
is shared by her lover. Still less is she a Margaret of Burgundy, or one
of the tigress-enchantresses of the Fronde, who would kill their lovers
after enjoying their love. It has been said often, and is beyond all
doubt true, that she would have been perfectly happy with Des Grieux if
he had fulfilled the expostulations of George the Fourth as to Mr.
Turveydrop, and had not only been known to the King, but had had twenty
thousand a year. She wants nobody and nothing but him, as far as the
"Him" is concerned: but she does not want him in a cottage. And here the
subtlety comes in. She does not in the least mind giving to others what
she gives him, provided that they will