The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗
- Author: Alain René le Sage
- Performer: -
Book online «The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗». Author Alain René le Sage
strongly of the hierarchy; a lay Christian should not live like
an archbishop; besides that, there are three times as many
servants as are necessary, and consequently you are put to an
expense at once enormous and useless.
Had you accepted the annuity of two thousand ducats which we
offered you at Madrid, said Don Caesar, we should have thought it
enough to give you the mansion furnished as it is: but you know,
you refused it; and we felt it but right to do what we have done
as an equivalent. Your bounty has been too lavish, answered I:
the gift of the estate was the utmost limit to which it should
have been extended, and that was more than sufficient to crown my
largest wishes. But to say nothing about what it has cost you to
keep up so great and expensive an establishment, I declare to you
most solemnly that these people stand in my way, and are a great
annoyance. In one word, gentlemen, either take back your boon, or
give me leave to enjoy it in my own way. I pronounced these last
words so much as if I was in earnest, that the father and son,
not meaning to lay me under any unpleasant restraint, at length
gave me their permission to manage my household as it should seem
expedient to my better judgment.
I was thanking them very kindly for having granted me that
privilege, without which a dukedom would have been but splendid
slavery, when Don Alphonso interrupted me by saying: My dear Gil
Blas, I will introduce you to a lady who will be extremely happy
to see you. Thus preparing me for the interview, he took me by
the hand and led the way to Seraphina s apartment, who set up a
scream of joy on recognizing me. Madam, said the governor, I
flatter myself that the visit of our friend Santillane at
Valencia is not less acceptable to you than myself. On that head,
answered she, he may rest confidently assured; time has not
obliterated the remembrance of the service which he once rendered
me and to that must be added a new debt of gratitude incurred on
the score of your obligations. I told the governor’s lady that I
was already too well requited for the danger which I had shared
in common with her deliverers, in exposing my life for her sake:
compliments to the like effect were bandied about for some time
on both sides, when Don Alphonso motioned to quit Seraphina’s
room. We then went back to Don Caesar, whom we found in the
saloon with a fashionable party, who were come to dinner.
All these gentleman were introduced, and paid their compliments
to me in the politest manner; nor did their attentions relax in
assiduity, when Don Caesar told them that I had been one of the
Duke of Lerma’s principal secretaries. In all likelihood several
of them might not be unacquainted that Don Alphonso had been
promoted to the government of Valencia by my interest, for
political secrets are seldom kept. However that might be, while
we were at table, the conversation principally turned on the new
cardinal. Some of the company either were, or affected to be, his
unqualified admirers, while others allowed his merit upon the
whole, but thought it had been rather overrated. I plainly saw
through their design of drawing me on to enlarge on the subject
of his eminence, and to gratify their taste for scandal with
court anecdotes at his expense. I could have been well enough
pleased to have delivered my real sentiments on his character,
but I kept my tongue within my teeth, and thereby passed in the
estimation of the guests for a close, confidential, politic,
trustworthy young statesman.
The party respectively retired home after dinner to take their
usual nap, what Don Caesar and his son, yielding to a similar
inclination, shut themselves up in their apartments.
For my own part, full of impatience to see a town which I had so
often heard extolled for its beauty, I went out of the governor’s
palace with the intention of walking through the streets. At the
gate a man accosted me with the following address: Will Signor de
Santillane allow me to take the liberty of paying my respects to
him? I asked him who and what he was. I am Don Caesar’s valet-de-chambre, answered he, but was one of his ordinary footmen during
your stewardship; I used to make my court to you every morning,
and you used to take a great deal of notice of me. I regularly
gave you intelligence of what was passing in the house. Do you
recollect my apprising you one day that the village surgeon of
Leyva was privately admitted into Dame Lorenza Sephora’s
bedchamber? It is a circumstance which I have by no means
forgotten, replied I. But now that we are talking of that
formidable duenna, what is become of her? Alas! resumed he, the
poor creature moped and dwindled after your departure, and at
length gave up the ghost, more to the grief of Seraphina than of
Don Alphonso, who seemed to consider her death as no great evil.
Don Caesar’s valet-de-chambre, having thus acquainted me with
Sephora’s melancholy end, made an humble apology for having
presumed to stop my walk, and then left me to continue my
progress. I could not help paying the tribute of a sigh to the
memory of that ill-fated duenna; and her decease affected me the
more, because I taxed myself with that melancholy catastrophe,
though a moment’s reflection would have convinced me, that the
grave owed its precious prey to the inroads of her cancer rather
than to the cruel charms of my person.
I looked with an eye of pleasure upon everything worth notice in
the town. The archbishop’s marble palace feasted my eyes with all
the magnificence of architecture; nor were the piazzas which
surrounded the exchange much inferior in commercial grandeur; but
a large building at a distance, with a great crowd standing
before the doors, attracted all my attention. I went nearer, to
ascertain the reason why so great a concourse of both sexes was
collected, and was soon let into the secret by reading the
following inscription in letters of gold on a tablet of black
marble over the door: La Posada de los Representantes [The
theatre] . The playbills announced for that day a new tragedy,
never performed, and gave the name of Don Gabriel Triaquero as
the author.
CH. V. — Gil Blas goes to the play, and sees a new tragedy. The
success of the piece. The public taste at Valencia.
I STOPPED for some minutes before the door, to make my remarks on
the people who were going in. There were some of all sorts and
sizes. Here was a knot of genteel-looking fellows, whose tailors
at least had done justice to their fashionable pretensions; there
a mob of ill-favoured and ill-mannered mortals, in a garb to
identify vulgarity. To the right was a bevy of noble ladies,
alighting from their carriages to take possession of their
private boxes; to the left a tribe of female traders in
lubricity, who came to sell their wares in the lobby. This mixed
concourse of spectators, as various in their minds as in their
faces, gave me an itching inclination to increase their number.
Just as I was taking my check, the governor and his lady drove
up. They spied me out in the crowd, and having sent for me, took
me with them to their box, what I placed myself behind them, in
such a position as to converse at my ease with either.
The theatre was filled with spectators from the ceiling
downwards, the pit thronged almost to suffocation, and the stage
crowded with knights of the three military orders. Here is a full
house! said I to Don Alphonso. You are not to consider that as
anything extraordinary, answered he; the tragedy now about to be
produced is from the pen of Don Gabriel Triaquero, the most
fashionable dramatic writer of his day. Whenever the playbill
announces any novelty from this favourite author, the whole town
of Valencia is in a bustle. The men as well as the women talk
incessantly on the subject of the piece: all the boxes are taken;
and, on the first night of performance, there is a risk of broken
limbs in getting in, though the price of admission is doubled,
with the exception of the pit, which is too authoritative a part
of the house for the proprietors to tamper with its patience.
What a paroxysm of partiality! said I to the governor. This eager
curiosity of the public, this hot-headed impatience to be present
at the first representation of Don Gabriel’s pieces, gives me a
magnificent idea of that poet’s genius.
At this period of our conversation the curtain rose. We
immediately left off talking, to fix our whole attention on the
stage. The applauses were rapturous even at the prologue: as the
performance advanced, every sentiment and situation, nay, almost
every line of the piece called forth a burst of acclamation; and
at the end of each act the clapping of hands was so loud and
incessant, as almost to bring the building about our ears. After
the dropping of the curtain, the author was pointed out to me,
going about from box to box, and with all the modesty of a
successful poet, submitting his head to the imposition of those
laurels, which the genteeler, and especially the fairer part of
the audience had prepared for his coronation.
We returned to the governor’s palace, where we were met by a
party of three or four gentlemen. Besides these mere amateurs,
there were two veteran authors of considerable eminence in their
line, and a gentleman of Madrid with tolerably fair claims to
critical authority and judgment They had all been at the play.
The new piece was the only topic of conversation during supper-time. Gentlemen, said a knight of St James, what do you think of
this tragedy? Has it not every claim to the character of a
finished work? Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn, a hand
to touch the true chords of pity, and sweep the lyre of poetry;
requisites how rarely, and yet how admirably united! In a word,
it is the performance of a person mixing in the higher circles of
society. There can be no possible difference of opinion on that
subject, said a knight of Alcantara. The piece is full of strokes
which Apollo himself might have aimed, and of perplexities
contrived so that none but the author himself could have
unravelled them. I appeal to that acute and ingenious stranger,
added he, addressing his discourse to the Castilian gentleman; he
looks to me like a good judge, and I will lay a wager that he is
on my side of the question. Take care how you stake on an
uncertainty, my worthy knight, answered the gentleman with a
sarcastic smile. I am not of your provincial school; we do not
pass our judgment so hastily at Madrid. Far from sentencing a
piece on its first representation, we are jealous of its apparent
merit while aided by scenic deception; our fancies and our
feelings may be carried away for the moment, but our serious
decision is suspended till we have read the work; and the most
common result of its appeal to the press is a defalcation from
its powers of pleasing on the stage.
Thus you perceive, pursued he, that it is our practice to examine
a work of genius closely before we stamp on it the mark of a
stock piece: its author’s fame, let it ring as
Comments (0)