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

Latin verses over the door of my farm-house, in

letters of gold, for the pious edification of my rustic

neighbours:

 

Inveni portum. Spes et fortuna, valete.

Sat me lusistis; ludite nunc alios.

 

BOOK THE TENTH.

 

CH. I. — Gil Blas sets out for the Asturias; and passes through

Valladolid, where he goes to see his old master, Doctor Sangrado.

By accident, he comes across Signor Manuel Ordonnez, governor of

the hospital.

 

JUST as I was arranging matters to take my departure from Madrid,

and go with Scipio to the Asturias, Paul V. gave the Duke of

Lerma a cardinal’s hat. This pope, wishing to establish the

inquisition in the kingdom of Naples, invested the minister with

the purple, and by that means hoped to bring King Philip over to

so pious and praiseworthy a design. Those who were best

acquainted with this new member of the sacred college, thought

much like myself, that the church was in a fair way for

apostolical purity, after so ghostly an acquisition.

 

Scipio, who would have liked better to see me once more blazing

at court, than either cloistered or rusticated, advised me to

shew my face at the cardinal’s audience. Perhaps, said he, his

eminence, finding you at large by the king’s order, may think it

unnecessary to affect any further displeasure against you, and

may even reinstate you in his service. My good friend Scipio,

answered I, you seem to forget that my liberty was granted only

on condition of making myself scarce in the two Castiles.

Besides, can you suppose me so soon inclined to become an

absentee from my domain of Lirias? I have told you before, and I

tell it you once again: Though the Duke of Lerma should restore

me to his good graces, though he should even offer me Don Rodrigo

de Calderona’s place, I would refuse it. My resolution is taken:

I mean to go and find out my parents at Oviedo, and carry them

with me to Valencia. As for you, my good fellow, if you repent of

having linked your fate with mine, you have only to say so: I am

ready to give you half of my ready money, and you may stay at

Madrid, where fortune puts on her kindest smiles to those who woo

her lustily.

 

What then! replied my secretary, a little affected by these

words, can you suspect me of any unwillingness to follow you into

your retreat? The very idea is an injury to my zeal and my

attachment … . What, Scipio! that faithful appendage, who

would willingly have passed the remnant of his days with you in

the tower of Segovia, rather than abandon you to your wretched

fate, can he feel sorrowful at the prospect of an abode, where a

thousand rural delights are waiting to smile on his arrival? No,

no, I have not a wish to turn you aside from your resolution. Nor

can I refrain from owning my malicious drift; when I advised you

to shew your face at the Duke of Lerma’s audience, it was for the

purpose of ascertaining whether any seedlings of ambition were

scattered among the fallows of your philosophy. Since that point

is settled, and you are mortified to all the pomps and vanities

of the world; let us make the best of our way from court, to go

and suck in with Zephyrus and Flora the innocent, delicious

pleasures so luxuriant in the nursery of our imaginations.

 

In fact, we soon afterwards took our departure together, in a

chaise drawn by two good mules, driven by a postilion whom I had

added to my establishment. We stopped the first day at Alcala de

Henar�s, and the second at Segovia, whence, without stopping to

see our generous warden, Tordesillas, we went forward to Pen�fiel

on the Duero, and the next day to Valladolid. At sight of this

large town, I could not help fetching a deep sigh. My companion,

surprised at that conscientious ventilation, inquired the reason

of it. My good fellow, said I, it is because I practised medicine

here for a long time. It gives me the horrors, even now, to think

of my unexpiated murders. The whole list of killed and wounded

are mustered in battle-array yonder: the tomb and the hospital

yawn with their disgorged inhabitants, who are rushing on to tear

me piecemeal, and exact the vengeance due to the drenched crew.

What a dreadful fancy! said my secretary. In truth, Signor de

Santillane, your nature is too tender. Why should you be shocked

at the common course of exchange in your branch of trade? Look at

all the oldest physicians: their withers are unwrung. What can

exceed the self-complacency with which they view the exits of

patients, and the entrances of diseases? Natural constitution

bears the brunt of all their failures, and medical infallibility

takes the credit of lucky accidents.

 

It is very true, replied I, that Doctor Sangrado, on whose

practice I formed myself, was like the rest of the old physicians

in point of self-complacency. It was to little purpose that

twenty people in a day yielded to his prowess; he was so

persuaded that bleeding in the arm and copious libations of warm

water were specifics for every case, that instead of doubting

whether the death of his patients might not possibly invalidate

the efficacy of his prescriptions, he ascribed the result to a

vacillating compliance with his system. By all the powers! cried

Scipio with a burst of laughter, you open to me an incomparable

character. If you have any curiosity to be better acquainted with

him, said I, it may be gratified to-morrow, should Sangrado be

still living, and resident at Valladolid: but it is highly

improbable; for he had one foot in the grave when I left him

several years ago.

 

Our first care, on putting up at the inn, was to inquire after

this doctor. We were told that he was not dead; but being

incapacitated by age from paying visits or any other vigorous

exertions, he had been superseded by three or four other doctors

who had risen into repute by a new practice, accomplishing the

same end by different means. We determined on lying by for a day

at Valladolid, as well to rest our mules, as to call on Signor

Sangrado. About ten o’clock next morning we knocked at his door;

and found him sitting in his elbow-chair, with a book in his

hand. He rose on our entrance; advanced to meet us with a firm

step for a man of seventy, and begged to know our business. My

worthy and approved good master, said I, have you lost all

recollection of an old pupil? There was formerly one Gil Blas, as

you may remember, a boarder in your house, and for some time your

deputy. What! is it you, Santillane? answered he, with a cordial

embrace. I should not have known you again. It, however, gives me

great pleasure to see you once more. What have you been doing

since we parted? Doubtless you have made medicine your

profession. It was very strongly my inclination so to do, replied

I; but imperious circumstances made me reluctantly abandon so

illustrious a calling.

 

So much the worse, rejoined Sangrado: with the principles you

sucked in under my tuition, you would have become a physician of

the first skill and eminence, with the guiding influence of

heaven to defend you from the dangerous allurements of chemistry.

Ah, my son! pursued he with a mournful air, what a change in

practice within these few years! The whole honour and dignity of

the art is compromised. That mystery, by whose inscrutable

decrees the lives of men have in all ages been determined, is now

laid open to the rude, untutored gaze of blockheads, novices, and

mountebanks. Facts are stubborn things; and ere long the very

stones will cry aloud against the rascality of these new

practitioners: lapides clamabunt! Why, sir, there are fellows in

this town, calling themselves physicians, who drag their degraded

persons at the currus triumphalis antimonii, or as it should

properly be translated, the cart’s tail of antimony. Apostates

from the faith of Paracelsus, idolaters of filthy kermes, healers

at haphazard, who make all the science of medicine to consist in

the preparation and prescription of drugs. What a change have I

to announce to you! There is not one stone left upon another in

the whole structure which our great predecessors had raised.

Bleeding in the feet, for example, so rarely practised in better

times, is now among the fashionable follies of the day. That

gentle, civilized system of evacuation which prevailed under my

auspices is subverted by the reign of anarchy and emetics, of

quackery and poison. In short, chaos is come again! Every one

orders what seems good in his own eyes; there is no deference to

the authority of ancient wisdom; our masters are laid upon the

shelf, and their axioms not one tittle the more regarded, for

being delivered in languages as defunct as the subjects of their

application.

 

However desirable it might seem to laugh at so whimsical a

declamation, I had the good manners to resist the impulse; and

not only that, but to inveigh bitterly against kermes, without

knowing whether it was a vegetable or an animal, and to pour

forth a commination of curses against the authors and inventors

of so diabolical an engine. Scipio, observing my by-play in this

scene, had a mind to come in for his share in the banter. Most

venerable prop of the true practice, said he to Sangrado, as I am

descended in the third generation from a physician of the old

school, give me leave to join you in your philippic against

chemical conspiracies. My late illustrious progenitor, heaven

forgive him all his sins! was so warm a partisan of Hippocrates,

that he often came to blows with ignorant pretenders, who vomited

forth blasphemies against that high priest of the faculty. What

is bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh: I could

willingly inflict tortures and death with my own hands on those

rash innovators whose daring enormities you have characterized

with such accuracy of discrimination and such force of language.

When wretches like these gain an ascendancy in civilized society,

can we wonder at the disjointed condition of the world?

 

The times are even more out of joint than you are aware of, said

the doctor. My book against the vanities and delusions of the new

practice might as well have fallen still-born from the press; it

seems, if anything, to have acted by contraries, and to have

exasperated heresy. The apothecaries, like the Titans of old,

heaping potion upon pill, and invading the Olympus of medicine,

think themselves fully qualified to usurp and maintain the

throne, now that it is only thought necessary to set open the

doors, and to drive the enemy out at the portal or the postern by

main force. They go to the length of infusing their deadly drugs

into apozems and cordials, and then set themselves up against the

most eminent of the fraternity. This contagion has spread its

influence even among the cloisters. There are monks in our

convents who unite surgery and pharmacy to the labours of the

confessional. Those medical baboons are always dipping their paws

into chemistry, and inventing compositions strong enough to lay a

scene of ecclesiastical mortality in the temperate abodes of

peace and religion. Now there are in Valladolid above sixty

religious houses for both sexes; judge what ravage must have been

made there by unmerciful pumping and the lancet misapplied.

Signor Sangrado, said I, you are perfectly in the right to give

these poisoners no quarter. I utter groan for groan with you, and

heave the philanthropic sigh over the invaded lives of our

fellow-creatures,