The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗

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to you. For a great length of time have I beheld my authority

universally respected, my decisions implicitly adopted, places,

pensions, governments, viceroyalties, and church preferments all

awaiting my disposal. Without umbrage to my royal master, I may

be said to be absolute in Spain. My individual fortunes can be

pushed no higher. But I would willingly fix firm the structure I

have raised; for the storms are already beginning to beat about

the citadel of my peace. My only safety must consist in

nominating my nephew, the Count de Lemos, as my successor in the

ministry.

 

This profound courtier, observing my astonishment, went on thus.

I see plainly, Santillane, I see plainly what surprises you. It

seems strange and unaccountable that I should prefer my nephew to

my own son, the Duke d’Uzeda. But you are to learn that this last

has too narrow a genius to fill up my place in politics; and

there are other reasons why I set my face against him. He has

found out the secret of making himself agreeable to the king, who

wants him for his interior cabinet; and back-stairs influence is

what I cannot bear. Royal favour is a sort of political mistress;

exclusive possession is its only charm. The very existence of the

passion is identified with inextinguishable jealousy; nor can we

the better endure to share the bliss, because our rival has been

nursed in our own bosom.

 

Thus do I lay bare the very recesses of my soul. I have already

tried to ruin the Duke d’Uzeda with the king; but having failed,

am pointing my artillery towards another object. I am determined

that the Count de Lemos shall stand first with the Prince of

Spain. Being gentleman of his bedchamber, he has opportunities of

talking with him continually; and, besides that he has a winning

manner with him, I know a sure method of enabling him to succeed

in his enterprise. By this device, my nephew will be pitted

against my son. The cousins harbouring unfavourable suspicions of

each other, will both be forced to place themselves under my

protection; and the necessity of the case will render them

submissive to my will. This is my project; nor will your

assistance be of slender avail to its success. It is you whom I

shall make the private channel of communication between the Count

de Lemos and myself.

 

After this confidence, which sounded for all the world like the

clink of current coin, my mind was easy about the future. At

length, said I, behold me taking shelter under Plutus’s gutter;

the golden shower may drench me to the skin, before I shall cry

hold, enough! It is impossible that the bosom friend of a man, by

whom the whole music of the political machine is tempered, should

be left to thrum upon the discord of poverty. Full of these

harmonious visions, my fifths and octaves were but little untuned

by the sensible declension of my purse.

 

CH. V. — The joys, the honours, and the miseries of a court

life, in the person of Gil Blas.

 

THE minister’s growing partiality towards me was soon noticed. He

displayed it ostentatiously, by committing his portfolio to my

custody, which it was his habit to carry in his own hand when he

went to council. This novelty causing me to be looked upon as a

rising favourite, excited the envy of certain persons, so that I

was preciously sprinkled with the hellish dew of court

malevolence. My two neighbours the secretaries were not the last

to compliment me on my budding honours, and invited me to supper

at the widow’s, not so much by way of returning my hospitality,

as with an eye to business in the cultivation of my acquaintance.

Parties were made for me everywhere. Even the haughty Don Rodrigo

was cap-in-hand to me. He now called me nothing less than Signor

de Santillane, though the moon had scarcely changed her face

since he thee’d and thou’d me, without ever bethinking him that

he was talking to something above a pauper. He heaped me up and

pressed me down with civilities, especially within eyeshot of our

common patron. But the fool was wiser than to be caught with

chaff. The good breeding of my returns was nicely proportioned to

my thorough detestation of my humble servant: a rascal who had

lived in court all his life could not have played the rascal

better than I did.

 

I likewise accompanied my lord duke when he had an audience of

the king, which was usually three times a day. In the morning he

went into his majesty’s chamber as soon as he was awake. There he

dropped down on his marrow bones by the bedside, talked over

what was to be done in the course of the day, and put into the

royal mouth the speeches the royal tongue was to make. He then

withdrew. After dinner he came back again; not for state affairs,

but for what, what? and a little gossip. He was well instructed

in all the tittle-tattle of Madrid, which was sold to him at the

earliest of the season. Lastly, in the evening he saw the king

again for the third time, put whatever colour he pleased on the

transactions of the day, and, as a matter of course, requested

his instructions for the morrow. While he was with the king, I

kept in the antechamber, where people of the first quality,

sinking that they might rise, threw themselves in the way of my

observation, and thought the day not lost if I had deigned to

exchange a few words of common civility with them. Was it to be

wondered at, if myself-importance fattened upon such food? There

are many folks at court, who stalk about on stilts of much

frailer materials.

 

One day my vanity was still more highly pampered. The king, to

whom the duke had puffed off my style, was curious to see a

sample of it. His excellency made me bring the register of

Catalonia and myself into the royal presence; telling me to read

the first memorial I had digested. If so catholic a critic

overpowered my modesty at first, the minister’s encouragement

recalled my scattered spirits, and I read with good tone and

emphasis what his majesty deigned to hear with some symptoms of

approbation. He spoke handsomely of my performance, and

recommended my fortunes to the special care of his minister. My

humility was not the greater for the augmentation of my

consequence; and a particular conversation some days afterwards

with the Count de Lemos swelled high the spring tide of all my

ambitious anticipations.

 

I waited on that nobleman from his uncle at the Prince of Spain’s

court, and presented credentials from the duke, directing him to

deal unreservedly with me, as with a man who was embarked in

their design and selected by himself exclusively as their go-between. The count then took me to a room, where he locked the

door, and then spoke as follows: Since you are confidential with

the Duke of Lerma, I doubt not you deserve to be so, and shall

unbosom myself to you without hesitation. You are to know that

matters go on just as we could wish. The Prince of Spain

distinguishes me above the most assiduous of his courtiers. I had

a private conversation with him this morning, wherein he

expressed some disgust at being restrained by the king’s avarice

from following the inclinations of his liberal heart, and living

on a scale befitting his august rank. On this head I chimed in

with his regrets; and taking advantage of the opportunity,

promised to carry him a thousand pistoles early to-morrow

morning, as an earnest of larger sums with which I have engaged

to feed his necessities forthwith. He was in ecstasy at my

promises; and I am certain of securing his grace and favour in

tail, if I can but fulfil my engagement Acquaint my uncle with

these particulars, and come back in the evening with his

sentiments on the subject.

 

I left the Count de Lemos with the last words still quivering on

his lips, and went back to the Duke of Lerma, who, on my report,

sent to ask Calderona for a thousand pistoles, which he charged

me to carry to the count in the evening. Away went I on my

errand, muttering to myself — So, so! now I have discovered the

minister’s infallible receipt for the cure of all evils. Faith

and troth, he is in the right; and to all appearance he may draw

as copiously as he pleases from the spring, without exhausting

the source. I can easily guess what bag those pistoles come from;

but after all, is it not the order of nature that the parent

should nurture and maintain the child! The Count de Lemos, at our

parting, said to me in a low voice — Farewell, my good and

worthy friend. The Prince of Spain has a little hankering after

the women; we must have a little conversation on that subject one

of these days; I foresee that your agency will be very applicable

on that head. I returned with my head full of this last hint,

which it was impossible to misinterpret. Neither did I wish to do

so, for it suited my talents to a nicety. What the devil is to

happen next? said I. Behold me on the point of becoming pimp to

the heir of the monarchy. Whether pimping was a virtue or a vice,

I did not stop to inquire: the coarse surtout of morality would

have worn but shabbily while the passions of so exalted a gallant

were in the glare and glow of all their newest gloss. What a

promotion for me to be the provider of pleasure to a great

prince! Fair and softly, Master Gil Blas, some one may say: after

all, you will be but second minister. May be so; but at bottom

the honour of both these posts is equal; the difference lies in

the profit only.

 

While executing these honourable commissions, and getting forward

daily in the good graces of the prime minister, what a happy

being should I have been, if statesmen were born with a set of

intestines to turn the chameleon’s diet into chyle! It was more

than two months since I had got rid of my grand lodging, and had

taken up my quarters in a little room scarcely good enough for a

banker’s clerk. Though this was not quite as it should be, yet

since I went out betimes in the morning, and never returned at

night before bed-time, there was not much to quarrel about on

that score. All day I was the hero of my own stage, or rather of

the duke’s. It was a principal part that I was playing. But when

I retired from this brilliant theatre to my own cockloft, the

great lord vanished, and poor Gil Blas was left behind, without a

royal image in his pocket, and what was worse, without the means

of conjuring up his glorious resemblance. Besides that it would

have wounded my pride to have divulged my necessities, there was

not a creature of my acquaintance who could have assisted me but

Navarro, and him I had too palpably neglected since my

introduction at court, to venture on soliciting his benevolence.

I had been obliged to sell my wardrobe article by article. There

was nothing more left than was absolutely necessary to make a

decent appearance. I no longer went to the ordinary, because I

had no longer wherewithal to pay my score. How then did I make

shift to keep body and soul together? There was every morning, in

our offices, a scanty breakfast set out, consisting of a little

bread and wine; this was the whole