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The marquis de Renoncour plays perhaps the most important "supporting role" in the history of eighteenth-century French literature. Renoncour's cameo appearance is so subtle, however, that many forget that he is in fact the invisible interlocutor of des Grieux's tale in the Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Indeed, although it is his first-person narrative that opens the tale of a young nobleman driven to ruin by love, fate and passion-"Je suis obligé de faire remonter mon lecteur au temps de ma vie où je rencontrai pour la première fois le Chevalier des Grieux. Ce fut environ six mois avant mon départ pour l'Espagne"1- the last word falls to des Grieux, the marquis having been long forgotten by most readers.
Manon's tale, however, is simply the last work in the sevenvolume Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité, the first volumes of which were published in 1728, which the marquis narrates.2 These memoirs offer the fictive autobiography of the marquis de Renoncour (the "man of condition" mentioned in the title) and describe the trajectory that leads this young nobleman, after extensive travel, to retire to a religious retreat in order to "pouvoir retrouver la paix du coeur, dans les exercises d'une vie douce et tranquille"' (212). Although most Prévost scholarship has focused on Manon Lescaut, giving a rare nod to the Mémoires as a whole, I would like to focus on a pivotal book in the man of condition's story.4 I will examine Book Four of the Mémoires, which concerns itself entirely with the marquis' ten-year exile and enslavement in Turkey during the period 1689-1699.
In Book Three the marquis, having lost his fortune in France following the contestation of his inheritance, finds himself in Vienna, where he is eager to "servir l'Empereur contre les infidèles" (120). Renoncour joins the Imperial forces in the fight against the Ottoman Empire, and is dispatched to Vidin, in northwestern Bulgaria. After a series of military victories, and the retreat of the Turks, the Imperial army retires for the winter. The marquis, left behind, soon finds himself in a bloody skirmish with Ottoman forces. At the end of a battle in which the Imperial troops are vastly outnumbered, the marquis is taken prisoner and transported to...