This was the very hour for which Lescaut had arranged the meeting between Des Grieux and Manon; and a few minutes after the departure of the Baron, the lovers were in each other's arms.
Manon was overjoyed at finding herself once more in the presence of her beloved Des Grieux; and the latter so quickly fell under the magic spell of her fatal fascination, that his first reproaches were soon forgotten in the passionate words of love and endearment which he could not repress.
So absorbed in their joy were the lovers that, oblivious of their surroundings, they paid no heed to the passing of time; and thus it came to pass that they were presently discovered by Geronte, still folded in each other's arms.
Furiously jealous at the sight, Geronte instantly rushed out from the hotel and denounced Manon to the authorities as a person of ill repute; and, in spite of her tears and entreaties, the unhappy girl was dragged off to prison and subsequently condemned to deportation.
Lescaut, still acting for his own selfish ends, made several endeavours, assisted by the almost frantic Des Grieux, to save the wretched victim from her awful fate; but all the efforts they made were in vain.
Des Grieux was overcome with grief and despair at the failure of his attempts to effect Manon's escape from prison on the day before she sailed, and, rather than be parted from his beloved one, when the last chance of rescue had vanished, he offered himself as a cabin-boy on board the vessel that conveyed her to America.
He was thus enabled to be of some small comfort to her on her arrival in the strange land she had dreaded so much; but, even here, fate was still against the lovers. Manon's fatal beauty was the means of placing further perils in her path, and, in order to escape a worse danger than any which had threatened her before, she was compelled to make a sudden hurried flight, accompanied by the ever-faithful Des Grieux.
The lovers now were forced to wander as fugitives in a vast solitary wilderness, far from human habitation and aid, and where starvation soon met them face to face.
All too quickly, poor Manon wasted and drooped, her bright butterfly nature utterly crushed by such terrible reverses; and at last, one day, as the pair toiled on their way, she sank to the ground dying from exhaustion.