reverence quite unknown to
many young English gentlemen who certainly would not do things that Des
Grieux did. Except when Manon is concerned, it would seem that he might
have been a kind of saint--as good at least as Tiberge. But his love for
her and his desire for her entirely saturate and transform him. That he
disobeys his father and disregards his brother is nothing: we all do
that in less serious cases than his, and there is almost warrant for it
in Scripture. But he cheats at play (let us frankly allow, remembering
Grammont and others, that this was not in France the unpardonable sin
that it has--for many generations, fortunately--been with us), at the
suggestion of his rascally left-hand brother-in-law, in order to supply
Manon's wants. He commits an almost deliberate (though he makes some
excuses on this point) and almost cowardly murder, on an unarmed
lay-brother of Saint-Sulpice, to get to Manon. And, worst of all, he
consents to the stealing of moneys given to her by his supplanters in
order to feed her extravagance. After this his suborning the King's
soldiers to attack the King's constabulary on the King's highway to
rescue Manon is nothing. But observe that, though it is certainly not
"All for God," it _is_ "All for Her." And observe further that all these
things--even the murder--were quite common among the rank and file of
that French aristocracy which was so busily hurrying on the French
Revolution. Only, Des Grieux himself would pretty certainly not have
done them if She had never come in his way. And he tells it all with a
limpid and convincing clarity (as they would say now) which puts the
whole thing before us. No apology is made, and no apology is needed. It
is written in the books of the chronicles of Manon and Des Grieux; in
the lives of Des Grieux and Manon, suppose them ever to have existed or
to exist, it could not but happen.

[Sidenote: The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of their
history.]

It is surely not profane (and perhaps it has been done already) to
borrow for these luckless, and, if you will, somewhat graceless persons,
the words of the mighty colophon of Matthew Arnold's most unequal but in
parts almost finest poem, at least the first and last lines:

So rest, for ever rest, immortal pair,

and

The rustle of the eternal rain of love.

Nor is it perhaps extravagant to claim for their creator--even for their
reporter--the position of the first person w