Manon Lescaut
By abbé Prévost
Cover: The Swing (1767), oil on canvas by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1806)
The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut is a novel by Antoine François Prévost. It tells a tragic love story about a nobleman (known only as the Chevalier des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). Their decision to live together without marriage is the start of a moral decline that also leads to gambling, fraud, theft, murder, and Manon's death as a deportee in New Orleans.
Summary source: Wikipedia: Manon Lescaut · CC BY-SA 4.0