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

me feel some compunctious

yearnings of nature, I left Bertrand with my stud and baggage at

the inn: then, with my secretary at my heels, who would not

desert me in my time of need, I repaired to my uncle’s house. The

moment I came within my mother’s reach, a natural emotion of

maternal instinct unfolded to her who I was, before her eyes

could possibly have run over the traces of my countenance. Son,

said she, with a melancholy expression, after having embraced me,

come and be present at your father’s death; your visit is just in

time to take in all the piteous circumstances of so deplorable an

event. With this heart-rending reception, she led me by the hand

into a chamber where the wretched Blas of Santillane, stretched

on a comfortless bed, in cold and dismal accord with the thinness

of his fortunes, was just entering on the last great act of human

nature. Though surrounded by the shades of death, he was not

quite unconscious of what was passing about him. My dearest

friend, said my mother, here is your son Gil Blas, who entreats

your forgiveness for all his undutiful behaviour, and is come to

ask your blessing before you die. At these tidings my father

opened his eyes, which where on the point of closing for ever: he

fixed them upon me; and reading in my countenance,

notwithstanding the awful brink on which he stood, that I was a

sincere mourner for his loss, his feelings were recalled to

sympathy by my sorrow. He even made an attempt to speak, but his

strength was too much exhausted. I took one of his hands in mine,

and while I bathed it with my tears, in speechless agony of soul,

he breathed his last, as if he had only waited my arrival to pay

the debt of nature, and wing his way to scenes of untried being.

 

This event had been too long present to my mother’s mind to

overwhelm her with any unparalleled affliction. Perhaps it sat

more heavily on me than on her, though my father had never in his

life given me any reason to feel for him as a father. But besides

that mere filial instinct would have made me weep over his cold

remains, I reproached myself with not having contributed to the

comfort of his latter days; then, when I considered what a hard-hearted villain I had been, I seemed to myself like a monster of

ingratitude, or rather like an impious parricide. My uncle, whom

I afterwards saw lying at his length on another wretched couch,

and in a most lamentable pickle, made me experience fresh agonies

of upbraiding conscience. Unnatural son! said I, communing with

my own uneasy thoughts, behold the chastisement of heaven upon

thy sins, in the disconsolate condition of thy nearest relations.

Hadst thou but thrown to them the superflux of that abundance, in

which before thy imprisonment thou rolledst, thou mightest have

procured for them those little comforts which thy uncle’s

ecclesiastical pittance was too scanty to furnish, and perhaps

have lengthened out the term of thy father’s life.

 

Gil Perez had fallen into a state of second childhood, and was,

though numerically upon the list of the living, in every

individual organ a mere corpse. His memory, nay, his very senses

had retired from their allotted stations in his system. Bootless

was it for me to strain him in my pious arms, and lavish outward

tokens of affection on him: they might as well have been wasted

on the desert air. To as little purpose did my mother ring in his

unnerved ear, that I was his nephew Gil Blas; be gazed at me with

a vacant, stupid stare, and gave neither sign nor answer. Had the

ties of consanguinity and gratitude been all too weak, to awaken

my tender sympathy for an uncle, to whom I owed the means of my

first launch into the world, the impression of helpless dotage on

my senses must have softened me into something like the

counterfeit of virtuous emotion.

 

While this scene was passing, Scipio preserved a melancholy

silence, sharing in all my sorrows, and mingling his sighs with

mine in the chastised luxury of friendship. But concluding that

my mother, after so long an absence, might wish to have some such

conversation with me, as the presence of a stranger must rather

repress than promote, I drew him aside, saying, Go, my good

fellow, sit down quietly at the inn, and leave me here with my

only surviving parent, who might consider your company as an

intrusion, while talking over family affairs. Scipio withdrew,

for fear of being a clog upon our confidence; and I sat down with

my mother to an interchange of communication, which lasted all

night. We reciprocally gave a faithful account of all that had

happened to each of us, since my first sally from Oviedo. She

related, in full measure and running over, all the petty insults,

disappointments, and mortifications, which she had undergone in

her pilgrimage from house to house as a duenna. A great number of

these little anecdotes it would have hurt my pride that my

secretary should have noted down in his biographical budget,

though I had never concealed from him the ups and downs in the

lottery of my own life. With all the respect I owe to my mother’s

sainted memory, the good lady had not the knack of going the

shortest road to the end of a story; had she but pruned her own

memoirs of all luxuriant circumstances, there would not have been

materials for more than a tithe of her narrative.

 

At length she got to the end of her tether, and I began my

career. With respect to my general adventures, I passed them over

lightly; but when I came to speak of the visit which the son of

Bertrand Muscada, the grocer of Oviedo, had paid me at Madrid, I

enlarged with decent compunction on that dark article in the

history of my life. I must frankly own, said I to my mother, that

I gave that young fellow a very bad reception; and he, doubtless,

in revenge, must have drawn a hideous outline of my moral

features. He did you more than justice, I trust, answered she;

for he told us that he found you so puffed and swollen with the

good fortune thrust upon you by the prime minister, as scarcely

to acknowledge him among your former acquaintance; and when he

gave you a moving description of our miseries, you listened as if

you had no interest in the tale, or knowledge of the parties. But

as fathers and mothers can always find some clue for palliation

in the conduct of their graceless children, we were loath to

believe that you had so bad a heart. Your arrival at Oviedo

justifies our favourable interpretation, and those tears which

are now flowing down your cheeks, are so many pledges either of

your innocence or your reformation.

 

Your constructions were too partial, replied I; there was a great

deal of truth in young Muscada’s report. When he came to see me

all my faculties were engrossed by vanity and mammon; ambition,

the prevailing devil which possessed me, left not a thought to

throw away on the desolate condition of my parents. It therefore

could be no wonder, if in such a disposition of mind I gave

rather a freezing reception to a man who, accosting me in a

peremptory style, took upon him to say, without mincing the

matter, that it was well known I was as rich as a Jew, and

therefore he advised me to send you a good round sum, seeing that

you were very much put to your shifts: nay, he went so far as to

reproach me, in phrase of more sincerity than good manners, with

my unfeeling negligence of my family. His confounded personality

stuck in my throat; so that losing my little stock of patience, I

shoved him fairly by the shoulders out of my closet. It must be

confessed that I took the administration of justice a little too

much into my own hands, being judge and party in the same cause;

neither was it proper that you should bear the brunt, because the

grocer was a little anti-saccharine in his phraseology; nor was

his advice the less pertinent or just, though couched in homely

terms, or urged with plodding vulgarity.

 

All this came plump in the teeth of my conscience, the moment I

had turned Muscada out of doors. The voice of natural instinct

contrived to make its way; my duty to my parents brought the

blood into my face; but it was the blush of shame for its

neglect, and not the glow of triumph at its performance. Yet even

my remorse can give me little credit in your eyes, since it was

soon stifled in the fumes of avarice and ambition. But some time

afterwards, having been safely lodged in the tower of Segovia by

royal mandate, I fell dangerously ill there; and that timely

remembrancer was the cause of bringing back your son to you. So

true is it, that sickness and imprisonment were my best moral

tutors; for they enabled nature to resume her rights, and weaned

me effectually from the court. Henceforth all my dear delight is

in solitude; and my only business in the Asturias is to entreat

that you would share with me in the mild pleasures of a retired

life. If you reject not my earnest petition, I will attend you to

an estate of mine in the kingdom of Valencia, and we will live

there together very comfortably. You are of course aware that I

intended to take my father thither also; but since heaven has

ordained it otherwise, let me at least have the satisfaction of

affording an asylum to my mother, and making amends by all the

attentions in my power for the fallow seasons in the former

harvest of my filial duty.

 

I accept your kind intentions in very good part, said my mother;

and would take the journey without hesitation, if I saw no

obstacles in the way. But to desert your uncle in his present

condition would be unpardonable; and I am too much accustomed to

this part of the country, to like living elsewhere: nevertheless,

as the proposal deserves to be maturely weighed, I will consider

further of it at my leisure, At present, your father’s funeral

requires to be ordered and arranged. As for that, said I, we will

leave it to the care of the young man whom you saw with me; he is

my secretary, with as clever a head and as good a heart as you

have often been acquainted with; let the business rest with him;

it cannot be in better hands.

 

Hardly had I pronounced these words, when Scipio came back; for

it was already broad day. He inquired whether he could be of any

service in our present distresses. I answered that he was come

just in time to receive some very important directions. As soon

as he was made acquainted with the business in hand: A word to

the wise! said he: the whole procession with its appropriate

heraldry is already marshalled in this head of mine; you may

trust me for a very pretty funeral. Have a care, said my mother,

to make it plain and decent without anything like pomp or parade.

It can scarcely be too humble for my husband, whom all the town

knows to have been low in rank, and indigent in circumstances.

Madam, replied Scipio, though he had been the meanest and most

destitute of the human race, I would not bate one button in the

array of his posthumous honours. My master’s credit is at stake

in the proper conduct of