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

>she, Theodora can do what she pleases with me. She has brought me

over to your side of the question; and if I can do you a

kindness, you shall soon be at the summit of your wishes; but,

with all my partiality in your favour, I know not how far my

efforts may be successful. It would be cruel to mislead you: the

prize will not be gained without a severe conflict. The object of

your passion is betrothed to another gentleman, and her character

most inauspicious to your designs. Such is her pride, and so

closely locked are her secrets within her own breast, that if, by

constancy and assiduities, you could extort from her a few sighs,

fancy not that her haughty spirit would indulge your ears with

their music. Ah! my dear Felicia, exclaimed I in an agony, why

will you thus magnify the obstacles in my way? To set them in

array will kill me. Lead me on with false hopes, if you will; but

do not drive me to despair. With these words I took one of her

hands, pressed it between mine, and slid a diamond on her finger

value three hundred pistoles, with such a moving compliment as

made her weep again.

 

Such speeches and corresponding actions deserved some scanty

comfort. She smoothed a little the rugged path of love. Sir, said

she, what I have just been telling you need not quite quench your

hope. Your rival, it is true, is in possession of the ground. He

comes back and fore as he pleases, he toys with her as often as

he likes, but all that is in your favour. The habit of constant

intercourse sheds a languor over their meetings. They part

without pain, and come together without emotion. One would take

them for man and wife. In a word, my mistress has no marks of

violent love for Don Austin. Besides, in point of person, there

is such a difference between you and him as cannot fail to catch

the eye of a nice observer like Donna Helena. Therefore do not be

cast down. Continue your particular attentions. You shall have a

second in me. I shall let no opportunity escape of pointing out

to my mistress the merit of all your exertions to please her. In

vain shall she intrench herself behind reserve. In spite of guard

and garrison, I will ransack the muster-roll of her sentiments.

 

Now were my open attacks and secret ambuscades more fiercely

pointed against the daughter of Don George. Among the rest, I

entertained her with a serenade. After the concert Felicia, to

sound her mistress, begged to know how she had been entertained.

The singer had a good voice, said Donna Helena. But how did you

like the words? replied the abigail. I scarcely noted them,

returned the lady; the music engrossed my whole attention. The

poetry excited as little curiosity as its author. If that is the

case, exclaimed the chambermaid, poor Don Gaston do Cogollos is

reckoning without his host; and a miserable spendthrift of his

glances, to be always ogling at our lattice-work. Perhaps it may

not be he, said the mistress with petrifying indifference, but

some other spark, announcing his passion by this concert. Excuse

me, answered Felicia, it is Don Gaston himself who accosted me

this morning in the street, and implored me to assure you how he

adored, in defiance of your rigorous repulses: but that he should

esteem himself the most blest of mortals, if you would allow him

to soothe his desponding thoughts by all the most delicate and

impassioned attentions. Judge now if I can be mistaken, after so

open an avowal.

 

Don George’s daughter changed countenance at once, and said to

her servant with a severe frown, You might well have dispensed

with the relation of this impertinent discourse. Bring me no more

such idle tales; and tell this young madman, when next he accosts

you, to play off his shallow artifices on some more accommodating

fool; but, at all events, let him choose a more gentlemanly

recreation than that of lounging all day at his window, and

prying into the privacy of my apartment.

 

This message was faithfully delivered at my next interview with

Felicia, who assured me that her mistress’s modes of speech were

not to be taken in their literal construction, but that my

affairs were in the best possible train. For my part, being

little read in the science of coquetry, and finding no favourable

sense on the face of the author’s original words, I was half out

of humour with the wire-drawn comments of the critic. She laughed

at my misgiving, and asked her friend for pen, ink, and paper,

saying: Sir knight of the doleful countenance, write immediately

to Donna Helena as dolefully as you look. Make echo ring with

your sufferings; outsigh the river’s murmur; and, above all, let

rocks and woods resound with the prohibition of appearing at your

window. Then pawn your existence on obeying her, though without

the possibility ever to redeem the pledge. Turn all that nonsense

into pretty sentences, as you gay deceivers so well know how to

do, and leave the rest to me. The event, I flatter myself will

redound more than you are aware to the honour of my penetration.

 

He must have been a strange lover who would not have profited by

so opportune an occasion of writing to his mistress. My letter

was couched in the most pathetic terms. Felicia smiled at its

contents; and said, that if the women knew the art of infatuating

men, the men in return had borrowed their influence over women

from the arch wheedler himself. My privy counsellor took the

note, and went back to Don George’s, with a special injunction

that my windows should be fast shut for some days.

 

Madam, said she, going up to Donna Helena, I met Don Gaston. He

must needs endeavour to come round me with his flattering

speeches. In tremulous accents, like a culprit pleading against

his sentence, he begged to know whether I had spoken to you on

his behalf. Then, in prompt and faithful compliance with your

orders, I snapped up the words out of his mouth. To be sure, my

tongue did run at a fine rate against him. I called him all

manner of names, and left him in the street like a stock, staring

at my termagant loquacity. I am delighted, answered Donna Helena,

that you have disengaged me from that troublesome person. But

there was no occasion to have snubbed him so unmercifully. A

creature of your degree should always keep a good tongue in its

mouth. Madam, replied the domestic, one cannot get rid of a

determined lover by mincing one’s words, though it comes to much

the same thing when one flies into a passion. Don Gaston, for

instance, was not to be bullied out of his senses. After having

given it him on both sides of his ears, as I told you, I went on

that errand of yours to the house of your relation. The lady, as

ill-luck would have it, kept me longer than she ought. I say

longer than she ought, because my plague and torment met me on my

return. Who the deuce would have thought of seeing him? It put me

all in a twitter; but then my tongue, which at other times is apt

to be in a twitter, stuck motionless in my mouth. While my tongue

stuck motionless in my mouth, what did he do? He slid a paper

into my hand without giving me time to consider whether I should

take it or no, and made off in a moment.

 

After this introduction, she drew my letter from under her stays,

and gave it with half a banter to her mistress, who affected to

read it in humorous scorn, but digested the contents most

greedily, and then put on the starch, offended prude. In good

earnest, Felicia, said she with all the gravity she could assume,

you were extremely off your guard, quite bewildered and

fascinated, to have taken the charge of such an epistle. What

construction would Don Gaston put upon it? What must I think of

it myself? You give me reason, by this strange behaviour, to

mistrust your fidelity, while he must suspect me of encouraging

his odious suit. Alas! he may, perhaps, lay that flattering

unction to his soul, that my love is legible in these characters,

and not his trespass. Only consider how you lay my towering

pride. Oh! quite the reverse, madam, answered the petticoated

pleader; it is impossible for him to think that; and if he did,

he would soon be convinced with a flea in his ear. I shall tell

him, when next we meet, that I have delivered his letter, that

you glanced at the superscription with petrifying indifference,

and then, without reading a word, tore it into ten thousand

pieces. You may swear that I did not read it with a safe

conscience, replied Donna Helena. I should be puzzled to retrace

a single sentiment. Don George’s daughter, not contented with

these words, suited the action to them, tore my letter, and

imposed silence on my advocate.

 

As I had promised no longer to play the lover at my window, the

farce of obedience was kept up for several days. Ogling being

interdicted, my courtship was doomed to enter in at my Helena’s

obdurate ears. One night I at tended under her balcony with

musicians; the first bars of the serenade were already playing,

when a swaggering blade, sword in hand, rushed in upon our

harmony, laying about him to the right and left, to the utter

discomfiture of the troop. Such mad warfare fired my tilting

propensities to equal fury. The affray became serious. Donna

Helena and her maid were disturbed by the clash of swords. They

looked out at their lattice, and saw two men engaged. Their cries

roused Don George and his servants. The whole neighbourhood was

assembled to part the combatants. But they came too late: on the

field of battle, bathed in his own blood and almost lifeless, lay

my unfortunate body. They carried me to my aunt’s, and sent for

the best surgical assistance in the place.

 

All the world was merciful, and wished me well, especially Donna

Helena, whose heart was now unmasked. Her forced severity yielded

to her natural feelings. Would you believe it? The cold,

relentless, insensible, was kindled into the warmest of love’s

votaries. She wore out the remainder of the night in weeping with

her faithful confidante, and giving her cousin, Don Austin de

Olighera, to perdition: for him they taxed with the plotted

massacre, and the bill was a true one. He could hide his heart as

well as his cousin; he therefore watched my motions, without

seeming to suspect them; and fancying them not to be without a

corresponding impulse, he resolved not to be sacrificed with

impunity. The accident was an awkward one to me, but it ended in

overpowering rapture. Dangerous as my wound was, the surgeons

soon brought me about. I was still confined to my chamber, when

my aunt, Donna Eleonora, went over to Don George, and made

proposals for Donna Helena. He consented the more readily to the

marriage, as he never expected to see Don Austin again. The good

old man was afraid of his daughter’s not liking me, because

cousin Olighera had kept her company; but she was so tractable to

the parental behest, as to furnish grounds for believing that in

Spain, as in other countries, the species, not the individual, is

the object with the sex.

 

Felicia, at our first private meeting, communicated the emotions

of her mistress on my misfortune. Now, like another Paris, I

thought Troy well lost for my Helen,