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

But I stopped her. Why do you avoid me? said I.

Has your perjured mistress forbidden you to give ear to my

complaints? or would you make a merit with the ungrateful woman,

of your voluntary refusal?

 

Sir, answered the plotting abigail, I confess my fault, and throw

myself on your mercy. Your appearance here has filled me with

remorse. My mistress has been betrayed, and unhappily in part by

my agency. The particulars of their infernal device followed this

avowal, with an endeavour to make me amends for its lamentable

consequence. To this effect, she offered me her services with her

mistress, and promised to undeceive her; in a word, to work night

and day, that she might soften the rigour of my sufferings, and

open the career of hope.

 

I pass over the numberless contradictions she experienced, before

she could accomplish the projected interview. It was at length

arranged to admit me privately, while Don Blas was at his

hunting-seat. The plot did not linger. The husband went into the

country, and they sent for me to his lady’s apartment.

 

My onset was reproachful in the extreme, but my mouth was shut

upon the subject. It is useless to look back upon the past, said

the lady. It can be no part of our present intention to work upon

each other’s feelings; and you are grievously mistaken, if you

fancy me inclined to flatter your aspiring hopes. My sole

inducement for receiving you here was to tell you personally,

that you have only henceforth to forget me. Perhaps I might have

been better satisfied with my lot, had it been united with yours;

but since heaven has ordered it otherwise, we must submit to its

decrees.

 

What! madam, answered I, is it not enough to have lost you, to

see my successful rival in quiet possession of all my soul holds

dear, but I must also banish you from my thoughts? You would tear

from me even my passion, my only remaining blessing! And think

you that a man, whom you have once enchanted, can recover his

self-possession? Know yourself better, and cease to enforce

impracticable behests. Well then! if so, rejoined she with

hurried importunity, do you cease to flatter yourself with

interesting my gratitude or my pity. In one short word, the wife

of Don Blas shall never be the mistress of Don Gaston. Let us at

once end a conversation at which delicacy revolts m spite of

virtue, and peremptorily forbids its longer continuance.

 

I now threw myself at the lady’s feet in despair. All the powers

of language and of tears were called forth to soften her. But

even this served only to excite some inbred sentiments of

compassion, stifled as soon as born, and sacrificed at the shrine

of duty. After having fruitlessly exhausted all my stores of

tender persuasion, rage took possession of my breast. I drew my

sword, and would have fallen on its point before the inexorable

Helena, but she saw my design and prevented it. Stay your rash

hand, Cogollos, said she. Is it thus that you consult my

reputation? In dying thus and here, you will brand me with

dishonour, and my husband with the imputation of murder.

 

In the agony of my despair, far from yielding to these

suggestions, I only struggled against the preventive efforts of

the two women, and should have struggled too successfully, if Don

Blas had not appeared to second them. He had been apprized of our

assignation; and instead of going into the country, had concealed

himself behind the hangings, to overhear our conference. Don

Gaston, cried he, as he arrested my uplifted arm, recall your

scattered senses, and no longer give a loose to these mad

transports.

 

Here I could hold no longer. Is it for you, said I, to turn me

from my resolution? You ought rather yourself to plunge a dagger

in my bosom. My love, with all its train of miseries, is an

insult to you. Have you not surprised me in your wife’s apartment

at this unseasonable hour? what greater provocation can you want

for your revenge? Stab me, and rid yourself of a man, who can

only give up the adoration of Donna Helena with his life. It is

in vain, answered Don Blas, that you endeavour to interest my

honour in your destruction. You are sufficiently punished for

your rashness; and my wife’s imprudence, in giving you this

opportunity of indulging it, is sanctified by the purity of her

sentiments. Take my advice, Cogollos: shrink not effeminately

from your wayward destiny, but bear up against it with the

patient courage of a hero.

 

The prudent Galician, by such language, gradually composed the

ferment of my mind, and waked me once more to virtue. I withdrew

in the determination of removing far from the scene of my folly,

and went for Madrid, two days afterwards. There, pursuing the

career of fortune and preferment, I appeared at court, and laid

myself out for connections. But it was my ill luck to attach

myself particularly to the Marquis of Villareal, a Portuguese

grandee, who, lying under a suspicion of intending to emancipate

his country from the Spanish yoke, is now in the castle of

Alicant. As the Duke of Lerma knew me to be closely connected

with this nobleman, he gave orders for my arrest and detention

here. That minister thought me capable of engaging in such a

project — he could not have offered a more outrageous affront to

a man of noble birth and a Castilian.

 

Don Gaston thus ended his story. By way of consolation I said to

him, Illustrious sir, your honour can receive no taint from this

temporary detainer, and your interest will probably be promoted

by it in the end. When the Duke of Lerma shall be convinced of

your innocence, he will not fail to give you a considerable post,

and thus retrieve the character of a gentleman unjustly accused

of treason.

 

CH. VII. — Scipio finds Gil Blas out in the tower of Segovia,

and brings him a budget of news.

 

OUR conversation was interrupted by Tordesillas, who came into

the room, and addressed me thus: Signor Gil Blas, I have just

been speaking with a young man at the prison gate. He inquired if

you were not here, and looked much mortified at my refusal to

satisfy his curiosity. Noble governor, said he, with tears in his

eyes, do not reject my most humble petition. I am Signor de

Santillane’s principal domestic, and you will do an act of

charity by allowing me to see him. You pass for a kind-hearted

gentleman in Segovia; I hope you will not deny me the favour of

conversing for a few minutes with my dear master, who is

unfortunate rather than criminal. In short, continued Don Andrew,

the lad was so importunate, that I promised to comply with his

wishes this evening.

 

I assured Tordesillas that he could not have pleased me better

than by bringing this young man to me, who could probably

communicate tidings of the last importance. I waited with

impatience for the entrance of my faithful Scipio; since I could

not doubt him to be the man, nor was I mistaken in my conjecture.

He was introduced at the time appointed; and his joy, which only

mine could equal, broke forth into the most whimsical

demonstrations. On my side, in the ecstasy of delight, I

stretched out my arms to him, and he rushed into them with no

courtly measured embrace. All distinctions of master and

dependent were levelled in the sympathetic rapture of our

meeting.

 

When our transports had subsided a little, I inquired into the

state of my household. You have neither household nor house,

answered he: to spare you a long string of questions, I will sum

up your worldly concerns in two words. Your property has been

pillaged at both ends, both by the banditti of the law and by

your own retainers, who, regarding you as a ruined man, paid

themselves their own wages out of whatever they found that was

portable. Luckily for you, I had the dexterity to save from their

harpy clutches two large bags of double pistoles. Salero, in

whose custody I deposited them, will make restitution on your

release, which cannot be far distant, as you were put upon his

majesty’s pension list of prisoners without the Duke of Lerma’s

knowledge or consent.

 

I asked Scipio how he knew his excellency to have had no share in

my arrest. You may depend on it, answered he, my information is

undeniable. One of my friends in the Duke of Uzeda’s confidence

acquainted me with all the circumstances of your imprisonment.

Calderona, having discovered by a spy that Signora Sirena, with

the handle of an alias to her name, was receiving night visits

from the Prince of Spain, and that the Count de Lemos managed

that intrigue by the panderism of Signor de Santillane,

determined to be revenged on the whole knot. To this end he

waited on the Duke of Uzeda, and discovered the whole affair. The

duke, overjoyed at such a fine opportunity of ruining his enemy,

did not fail to bestir himself. He laid his information before

the king, and painted the prince’s danger in the most lively

colours. His majesty was much angered, and shewed that he was so,

by sending Sirena to the nunnery provided for such frail sisters,

banishing the Count de Lemos, and condemning Gil Blas to

perpetual imprisonment.

 

This, pursued Scipio, is what my friend told me. Hence, you

gather your misfortune to be the Duke of Uzeda’s handiwork, or

rather Calderona’s.

 

Thus it seemed probable that my affairs might be reinstated in

time; that the Duke of Lerma, chagrined at his nephew’s

banishment, would move heaven and earth for that nobleman’s

recall; and it might not be too much to expect that his

excellency would not forget me. What a delicate gipsy is hope!

She wheedled me out of all anxiety about my shattered fortunes,

and made me as light-hearted as if I had good reason to be so. My

prison looked not like the dungeon of perpetual misery, but like

the vestibule to a more distinguished station. For thus ran the

train of my reasoning: Don Fernando Borgia, Father Jerome of

Florence, and more than all, Friar Louis of Aliaga, who may thank

him for his place about the king’s person, are the prime

minister’s partisans. With the aid of such powerful friends, his

excellency will bear down all opposition, even supposing no

change to take place in the political barometer. But his

majesty’s health is very precarious. The first act of a new reign

would be to recall the Count de Lemos; he would not feel himself

at home in the young monarch’s presence till he had introduced me

at court; and the young monarch

would not sit easy on his throne till he had showered benefits on

my head. Thus, feasting by anticipation on the pleasures of

futurity, I became callous to existing evils. The two bags, snug

in the goldsmith’s custody, were no bad doubles to the part which

hope acted in this shifting pantomime.

 

It was impossible not to express my gratitude to Scipio for his

zeal and honesty. I offered him half the salvage, but he rejected

it. I expect, said he, a very different acknowledgment.

Astonished as much at his mysterious claim as at his refusal, I

asked what more I could do for him. Let us never part, answered

he. Allow me to link my fate with yours. I feel for you what I

never felt for any other master. And on my part, my good fellow,

said I, you may rest assured that your attachment is not thrown

away. You caught my fancy at first