The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: same time that neither governor, Synnelet, nor the whole colony
together, should lay hands upon my wife, or mistress, if they
chose so to call her.
"I immediately told Manon of the distressing message I had just
received. We conjectured that Synnelet had warped his uncle's
mind after my departure, and that it was all the effect of a
premeditated design. They were, questionless, the stronger
party. We found ourselves in New Orleans, as in the midst of the
ocean, separated from the rest of the world by an immense
interval of space. In a country perfectly unknown, a desert, or
inhabited, if not by brutes, at least by savages quite as
|