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

sight. We must have been born

under Libra or Gemini, where friendship is lord of the ascendant.

I willingly accept your proffered partnership, and will commence

business by prevailing with the warden to immure you along with

me in this tower. That is the very thing, exclaimed he. You were

beforehand with me, for I was just going to beg that favour. Your

company is dearer to me than liberty itself. I shall only just go

to Madrid now and then, to snuff the gale of the ministerial

atmosphere, and try whether any scent lies which may be

favourable for your pursuit. Thus will you combine in me a bosom

friend, a trusty messenger, and an unsuspected spy.

 

These advantages were too important for me to forego them. I

therefore kept so useful a person about me, with leave of the

obliging warden, who would not stand in the way of so soothing a

relief to the weariness of solitude.

 

CH. VIII. — Scipio’s first journey to Madrid: its object and

success. Gil Blas falls sick. The consequence of his illness.

 

IF it is a common proverb that our direst enemies are those of

our own household, the converse ought equally to be admitted

among the saws of a more candid experience. After such

incontestable proofs of Scipio’s zeal, he became to me like

another self. All distinction of place was confounded between Gil

Blas and his secretary; all insolence was dropped on the one

hand, all cringing on the other. Their lodging, bed, and board

were in common.

 

Scipio’s conversation was of a very lively turn; he might have

been dubbed the Spanish Momus, without any derogation to the

Punch of the Pantheon. But he had a long head, as well as a

fanciful brain, combining the characters of counsellor and

jester. My friend, said I, one day, what do you think of writing

to the Duke of Lerma? It could, methinks, do no harm. Why, as to

that, answered he, the great are such chameleons, that there is

no knowing where to have them. At all events you may risk it;

though I would not lay the postage of your letter on its success.

The minister loves you, it is true; but then political love lacks

memory, as much as personal love lacks visual discrimination. Out

of sight, out of mind! is at once the motto and the stigma of

these gentry.

 

True as this may be in the general, replied I, my patron is a

glorious exception. His kindness lives in my recollection. I am

persuaded that he suffers for my sufferings, and that they are

incessantly preying on his spirits. We must give him credit for

only waiting till the king’s anger shall pass away. Be it so,

resumed he; I wish you may not reckon without your host. Assail

his excellency then with an epistle to stir the waters. I will

engage to deliver it into his own hands. Pen, ink, and paper

being brought, I composed a specimen of eloquence which Scipio

declared to be a paragon of pathos, and Tordesillas preferred,

for the cant of sermonizing prolixity, to the old archbishop’s

homilies.

 

I flattered myself that there would be tears in the Duke of

Lerma’s eyes, and distraction in his aspect, at the detail of

miseries which existed only on paper. In that assurance, I

despatched my messenger, who no sooner got to Madrid, than he

went to the minister’s. Meeting with an old domestic of my

acquaintance, he had no difficulty in gaining access to the duke.

My lord, said Scipio to his excellency, as he delivered the

packet, one of your most devoted servants, lying at his length on

straw, in a damp and dreary dungeon at Segovia, most humbly

supplicates for the perusal of this letter, which a tender-hearted turnkey has furnished him with the means of writing. The

minister opened the letter, and glanced over the contents. But

though he found there a motive and a cue for passion, enough to

amaze all his faculties at once, far from drowning the floor with

briny secretions, he cleaved the ear of his household, and smote

the heart of my courier with horrid speech: Friend, tell

Santillane that he has a great deal of impudence to address me,

after so rank an offence, worthily confronted by the severe

sentence of the king. Under that sentence let the wretch drag out

his days, nor look to my mediation for a respite.

 

Scipio, though neither dull nor muddy-mettled, began to be

unpregnant of this defeated cause. Yet he was not so pigeon-livered as to retire without an effort in my favour. My lord,

replied he, this poor prisoner will give up the ghost with grief,

at the recital of your excellency’s displeasure. The duke

answered like a prime minister, with a supercilious corrugation

of features, and a decisive revolution of his front to some more

prosperous suitor. This he did, to cover his own share in the

shame of pimping; and such treatment must all those hireling

scavengers expect, who rake in the filth and ordure of rotten

statesmen, courtiers, and politicians.

 

My secretary came back to Segovia and delivered the result of his

mission. And now behold me, sunk deeper than on the first day of

my imprisonment, in the gulf of affliction and despair! The Duke

of Lerma’s turning king’s evidence gave a hanging posture to my

affairs. My courage was run out; and though they did all they

could to keep up my spirits, the agitation and distress of my

mind threw me into a fever.

 

The warden, who took a lively interest in my recovery, fancying

in his unmedical head that physicians cured fevers, brought me a

double dose of death in two of that doleful deity’s most

practised executioners. Signor Gil Blas, said he, as he ushered

in their grisly forms, here are two godsons of Hippocrates, who

are come to feel your pulse, and to augment the number of their

trophies in your person. I was so prejudiced against the whole

faculty, that I should certainly have given them a very

discouraging reception, had life retained its usual charms in my

estimation; but being bent on my departure from this vale of

tears, I felt obliged to Tordesillas for hastening my journey, by

a safer conveyance than the crime of suicide.

 

My good sir, said one of the pair, your recovery will, under

Providence, depend on your entire confidence in our skill.

Implicit confidence I answered I: with your assistance, I am

fully persuaded that a few days will place me beyond the reach of

fever, and all the shocks that flesh is heir to. Yes! with the

blessing of Heaven, rejoined he, it is a consummation devoutly to

be wished, and easily to be effected. At all events, our best

endeavours shall not be wanting. And indeed it was no joke: for

they got me into such fine training for the other world, that few

of my material particles were left in this. Already had Don

Andrew, observing me fumble with the sheets, and smile upon my

fingers’ ends, and thinking there was but one way, sent for a

Franciscan to shew it me: already had the good father, having

mumbled over the salvation of my soul, retired to the refection

of his own body: and my own opinion leaned to the immediate

necessity of making a good end. I beckoned Scipio to my bedside,

My dear friend, said I, in the faint accents of a tortured and

evacuated patient I give and bequeath to you one of the bags in

Gabriel’s possession; the other you must carry to my father and

mother in the Asturias, who, if still living, must be in narrow

circumstances. But, alas! I fear, they have not been able to bear

up against my ingratitude. Muscada’s report of my unnatural

behaviour must have brought their grey hairs with sorrow to the

grave. Should Heaven have fortified their tender hearts against

my indifference, you will give them the bag of doubloons, with

assurances of my dying remorse: and, if they are no more, I

charge you to lay out the money in masses for the repose of their

souls and of mine. Then did I stretch out my hand, which he

bathed in silent tears. It is not always true, that the mourning

of an heir is mirth in masquerade.

 

For some hours I fancied myself outward-bound, and on the point

of sailing; but the wind changed. My pilots having quitted the

helm, and left the vessel to the steerage of nature, the danger

of shipwreck disappeared. The fever, mutinying against its

commanding officers, gave all their prognostics the lie, and

acted contrary to general orders. I got better by degrees, in

mind as well as in body. My consolation was all derived from

within. I looked at wealth and honours with the eye of a dying

anchorite, and blessed the malady which restored my soul. I

abjured courts, politics, and the Duke of Lerma. If ever my

prison doors were opened, it was my fixed resolve to buy a

cottage, and live like a philosopher.

 

My bosom friend applauded my design, and to further its

execution, under took a second journey to solicit my release, by

the intervention of a clever girl about the person of the

prince’s nurse. He contended that a prison was a prison still, in

spite of kind indulgence and good cheer. In this I agreed, and

gave him leave to depart, with a fervent prayer to Heaven that we

might soon take possession of our hermitage.

 

CH. IX. — Scipio’s second journey to Madrid. Gil Blas is set at

liberty on certain conditions. Their departure from the tower of

Segovia, and conversation on their journey.

 

WHILE waiting for Scipio’s return from Madrid, I began a course

of study. Tordesillas furnished me with more books than I wanted.

He borrowed them from an old officer who could not read, but had

fitted up a magnificent library, that he might pass for a man of

learning. Above all, I delighted in moral essays and treatises,

because they abounded in commonplaces according with my

antipathy to courts and philosophic relish of solitude.

 

Three weeks elapsed before I heard a syllable from my negotiator,

who returned at length with a cheerful countenance, and news to

the following effect: By the intercession of a hundred pistoles

with the chambermaid, and her intercession with her mistress, the

Prince of Spain has been prevailed with to plead for your

enlargement with his royal father. I hastened hither to announce

these happy tidings, and must return immediately to put the last

hand to my work. With these words, he left me, and went back to

court

 

At the week’s end my expeditious agent returned, with the

intelligence that the prince had procured my liberty, not without

some difficulty. On the same day my generous keeper confirmed the

assurance in person, with the kindest congratulations, and the

following notice: — Your prison doors are open, but on two

conditions, which I am sorry that my duty obliges me to announce,

because they will probably be disagreeable to you. His majesty

expressly forbids you to shew your face at court, or to be found

within the limits of the two Castiles on this day month. I am

extremely sorry that you are interdicted from court. And I am

delighted at it, answered I. Witness all the powers above! I

asked the king for only one favour; he has granted me two.

 

With my liberty thus confirmed, I hired a couple of mules, on

which we mounted the next day, after taking leave of Cogollos,

and thanking Tordesillas a thousand times for all his instances

of friendship. We set forward cheerfully on the road to Madrid,

to draw our