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

sinking under the fell attack of so heterodox a

practice. It fills me with horror to think what a dead weight

chemistry may one day be to medicine, just as adulterated coin

operates on national credit. Far be that evil day from this

generation.

 

Just at this climax of our discourse, in came an old female

servant, with a salver for the doctor, on which was a little

light roll and a glass with two decanters, the one filled with

water and the other with wine. After he had eaten a slice, he

washed it down with a diluted beverage, two parts water to one of

wine; but this temperate use of the good creature did not at all

save him from the acrimony of my ridicule. So so, good master

doctor, said I, you are fairly caught in the fact. You a wine-bibber! you, who have entered the lists like a knight-errant

against that unauthenticated fermentation? you, who reached your

grand climacteric on the strength of the pure element? How long

have you been so at odds with yourself? Your time of life can be

no excuse for the alteration; since, in one passage of your

writings, you define old age to be a natural consumption, which

withers and attenuates the system; and as an inference from that

position, you reprobate the ignorance of those writers who

dignify wine with the appellation of old men’s milk. What can you

say, therefore, in your own defence?

 

You belabour me most unjustly, answered the old physician. If I

drank neat wine, you would have a right to treat me as a deserter

from my own standard; but your eyes may convince you that my wine

is well mixed. Another heresy, my dear apostle of the wells and

fountains! replied I. Recollect how you rated the canon S�dillo

for drinking wine, though plentifully dashed with the salubrious

fluid. Own modestly and candidly that your theory was unfounded

and fanciful, and that wine is not a poisonous liquor, as you

have so falsely and scandalously libelled it in your works, any

further than, like any other of nature’s bounties, it may be

abused to excess.

 

This lecture sat rather uneasily on our doctor’s feelings, as a

candidate for consistency. He could not deny his inveteracy

against the use of wine in all his publications; but pride and

vanity not allowing him to acknowledge the justice of my attack

on his apostasy, he was left without a word to say for himself.

Not wishing to push my sarcasm beyond the bounds of good humour,

I changed the subject; and after a few minutes’ longer stay, took

my leave, gravely exhorting him to maintain his ground against

the new practitioners. Courage, Signor Sangrado! said I: never be

weary of setting your wits against kermes; and deafen the health-dispensing tribe with your thunders against the use of bleeding

in the feet. If, spite of all your zeal and affection for medical

orthodoxy, this empiric generation should succeed in supplanting

true and legitimate practice, it will be at least your

consolation to have exhausted your best endeavours in the support

of truth and reason.

 

As my secretary and myself were walking to the inn, making our

observations in high glee on the doctor’s entertaining and

original character, n man from fifty five to sixty years of age

happened to pass near us in the street, walking with his eyes

fixed on the ground, and a large rosary in his hand. I conned

over the distinctive cut of his appearance most cunningly, and

was rewarded in the recognition of Signor Manuel Ordonnez, that

faithful trustee for the affairs of the hospital, of whom so

honourable mention is made in the first volume of these true and

instructive memoirs. Accosting him with the most profound and

unquestionable tokens of respect, I paid my compliments in due

form and order to the venerable and trustworthy Signor Manuel

Ordonnez, the man of all the world in whose hands the interests

of the poor and needy are most safely and beneficially placed. At

these words he looked me steadfastly in the face, and answered

that my features were not altogether strange to him, but that he

could not recollect where he had seen me. I used to go backwards

and forwards to your house, replied I, when one of my friends, by

name Fabricio Nunez, was in your service. Ah! I recollect the

circumstance at once, rejoined the worthy director with a cunning

leer, and have good reason to do so; for you were a brace of

pleasant lads, and were by no means backward in the little scape-grace tricks of youth and inexperience. Well! and what is become

of poor Fabricio? Whenever he comes across my thoughts, I cannot

help feeling a little uneasy about his temporal and eternal

welfare.

 

It was to relieve your mind upon that subject, said I to Signor

Manuel, that I have taken the liberty of stopping you in the

street. Fabricio is settled at Madrid, where he employs himself

in publishing miscellanies and collections. What do you mean by

miscellanies and collections? replied he. I mean, resumed I, that

he writes in verse and prose, from epic poems and the highest

branches of philosophy, down to plays, novels, epigrams, and

riddles. In short, he is a lad of universal genius, and most

exemplary benevolence; sometimes modestly taking to himself the

credit of his own compositions, and sometimes lending out his

talents to the literary ambition of those noblemen who write for

their own amusement, but wish their names to be concealed, except

from a chosen circle. By traffic like this he sits at the very

first tables. But how does he sit at his own? said the director:

upon what terms does he live with his baker? Not quite so

confidentially as with people of fashion, answered I; for between

ourselves, I take him to be quite as much out at elbows as ever

Job was. More bonds and judgments against him than ever Job had,

take my word for it! replied Ordonnez. Let him lick the spittle

of his titled friends and patrons till his stomach heaves at the

nauseating saliva; his printed dedications and his oral flattery,

in spite of all the cringing and all the toad-eating, which

constitute the stockin-trade of his profession, with all the

profits of his works, whether by subscription or ordinary

publication, will not bring grist enough to his mill, to keep

hunger from the door. Mind if what I say does not turn out to be

true! He will come to the dogs at last.

 

Nothing more likely! replied I; for he cohabits with the muses

already; and many a plain man has found, to his cost, that there

is no keeping company with the sisters, without being worried by

their bullying brethren. My friend Fabricio would have done much

better by remaining quietly with your lordship; he would now have

been lying on a bed of roses, and everything he had touched would

have turned to gold. He would at least have been in a very snug

berth, said Manuel. He was a great favourite of mine; and I

meant, by a regular gradation from subaltern to principal

situations, to have established him in ease and affluence on the

basis of public charity; but the foolish fellow took it into his

head to set up for a wit. He wrote a play, and brought it out at

the theatre in this town: the piece went off tolerably well, and

nothing thenceforth would serve his turn but commencing author by

profession. Lope de Vega, in his estimation, was but a type of

him: preferring, therefore, the intoxicating vapour of public

applause to the plain roast and boiled of this substantial

ordinary, he came to me for his discharge. It was to no purpose

for me to argue the point, or to prove to him what a silly cur he

was, to drop the bone and run after the shadow: the mad blockhead

was so suffocated by the smother of authorship, that the

instinctive dread of fire could not rouse his alacrity to escape

burning. In short, he was miserably unconscious of his own

interest, as his successor can testify: for he, possessing

practical good sense, though without half Fabricio’s quickness

and versatility, makes it his whole study and delight to go

through his business in a workmanlike manner, and to fall in with

all my little ways. In return for such good conduct, I pushed him

forward in a manner corresponding with his deserts; and he unites

in his own person, even at this time of day, two offices in the

hospital, the least lucrative of which would be more than

sufficient to place any honest man at his ease, though encumbered

with a yearly teeming wife.

 

CH. II. — Gil Blas continues his journey, and arrives in safety

at Oviedo. The condition of his family. His father’s death, and

its consequences.

 

FROM Valladolid we got to Oviedo in four days, without any

untoward accident on the road, in spite of the proverb, which

says, that robbers lay their ears to the ground, when pilgrims

are going with rich offerings, and traders are riding with fat

purses. It would have been a feasible, as well as a tempting

speculation. Two tenants of a subterraneous abode might have

presented an aspect to have frightened our doubloons into a

surrender; for courage was not one of the qualities I had imbibed

at court; and Bertrand, my mule-driver, seemed not to be of a

temper to get his brains blown out in defending a purse into

which he had no free ingress. Scipio was the only one of the

party who was anything of a bully.

 

It was night when we came into town. Our lodgings were at an inn

near my uncle, Gil Perez, the canon. I was very desirous of

ascertaining the circumstances of my parents before my first

interview with them; and, in order to gain that information, it

was impossible to make my inquiries in a better channel than

through my landlord and landlady, into the lines of whose faces

you could not look without being satisfied that they knew every

tittle of their neighbours’ concerns. As it turned out, the

landlord kenned me after a diligent perusal of my features, and

cried out: By Saint Anthony of Padua! this is the son of the

honest usher, Blas of Santillane. Ay, indeed! said the hostess;

and so it is: without a single muscle altered! just for all the

world that same little stripling Gil Blas, of whom we used to say

that he was as saucy as he was high. It brings old times to my

memory! when he used to come hither with his bottle under his

arm, to fetch wine for his uncle’s supper.

 

Madam, said I, you have a most inveterate memory; but for

goodness’ sake change the subject, and tell me the modern news of

my family. My father and mother are doubtless in no very enviable

situation. In good truth, you may say that, answered the

landlady: you may rack your brains as long as you like, but you

will never think of anything half so miserable as what they are

suffering at this present moment. Gil Perez, good soul! is

defunct all down one side by a stroke of the palsy, and the other

half of him is little better than a corpse; we cannot expect him

to last long: then your father, who went to live with his

reverence a little while ago, is troubled with an inflammation of

the lungs, and is standing, as a body may say, quavery-mavery

between life and death; while your mother, who is not over and

above hale and hearty herself, is obliged to nurse them both.

 

On this intelligence, which made