"The sweetness of her glance, or rather my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin, did not allow me to hesitate for a moment."
So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early eighteenth-century Paris--with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses-via prison and deportation to a tragic denouement in the treeless wastes of Louisiana. It is one of the great love stories, and also one of the most enigmatic: how reliable a witness is Des Grieux, Manon's lover, whose tale he narrates? Is Manon a...