reading (with infinite [37] surprise!) in my afternoon walks in the
little wood here, a new book he left behind him--a great favourite of
his; as it has been a favourite with large numbers in Paris.* Those
pathetic shocks of fortune, those sudden alternations of pleasure and
remorse, which must always lie among the very conditions of an
irregular and guilty love, as in sinful games of chance:--they have
begun to talk of these things in Paris, to amuse themselves with the
spectacle of them, set forth here, in the story of poor Manon
Lescaut--for whom fidelity is impossible, so vulgarly eager for the
money which can buy pleasures such as hers--with an art like
Watteau's own, for lightness and grace. Incapacity of truth, yet
with such tenderness, such a gift of tears, on the one side: on the
other, a faith so absolute as to give to an illicit love almost the
regularity of marriage! And this is the book those fine ladies in
Watteau's "conversations," who look so exquisitely pure, lay down on
the cushion when the children run up to have their laces righted.
Yet the pity of it! What floods of weeping! There is a tone about
it which strikes me as going well with the grace of these leafless
birch-trees against the sky, the pale silver of their bark, and a
certain delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil. It is all
one half-light; and the heroine, nay! the [38] hero himself also,
that dainty Chevalier des Grieux, with all his fervour, have, I
think, but a half-life in them truly, from the first. And I could
fancy myself almost of their condition sitting here alone this
evening, in which a premature touch of winter makes the world look
but an inhospitable place of entertainment for one's spirit. With so
little genial warmth to hold it there, one feels that the merest
accident might detach that flighty guest altogether. So chilled at
heart things seem to me, as I gaze on that glacial point in the
motionless sky, like some mortal spot whence death begins to creep