give her what he cannot give. The
possibility of this combination is of course not only shocking to Mrs.
Grundy, but deniable by persons who are not Mrs. Grundy at all. Its
existence is not really doubtful, though hardly anybody, except Prevost
and (I repeat it, little as I am of an Ibsenite) Ibsen in the _Wild
Duck_, has put it into real literature. Manon, like Gina and probably
like others, does not really think what she gives of immense, or of any
great, importance. People will give her, in exchange for it, what she
does think of great, of immense importance; the person to whom she would
quite honestly prefer to give it cannot give her these other things. And
she concludes her bargain as composedly as any _bonne_ who takes the
basket to the shops and "makes its handle dance"--to use the French
idiom--for her own best advantage. It does annoy her when she has to
part from Des Grieux, and it does annoy her that Des Grieux should be
annoyed at what she does. But she is made of no nun's flesh, and such
soul as she has is filled with much desire for luxury and pleasure. The
desire of the soul will have its way, and the flesh lends itself readily
enough to the satisfaction thereof.

[Sidenote: And that of the hero.]

So, too, there is no such instance known to me of the presentation of
two different characters, in two different ways, so complete and yet so
idiosyncratic in each. Sainte-Beuve showed what he was going to become
(as well, perhaps, as something which he was going to lose) in his
slight but suggestive remarks on the relation of Des Grieux to the
average _roue_ hero of that most _roue_ time. It is only a suggestion;
he does not work it out. But it is worth working out a little. Des
Grieux is _ab initio_, and in some ways _usque ad finem_, a sort of
_ingenu_. He seems to have no vicious tendencies whatever; and had Manon
not supervened, might have been a very much more exemplary Chevalier de
Malte than the usual run of those dignitaries, who differed chiefly
from their uncrossed comrades and brethren in having no wife to be
unfaithful to. He is never false to Manon--the incident of one of
Manon's lovers trying vainly to tempt his rival, with a pretty cast-off
mistress of his own, is one of the most striking features of the book.
He positively reveres, not his mother, who is dead, and reverence for
whom would be nothing in a Frenchman, but his father, and even, it would
seem, his elder brother--a last stretch of