The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗
- Author: Alain René le Sage
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generally did once a week. I waited impatiently for the day, but
as yet, without any other motive than the mere desire of prying.
At last the good man went his way, and I unpicked his pillow,
where I found, among the stuffing, the amount of about fifty
crowns in all sorts of coin.
This treasure must have accumulated from the gratitude of the
peasantry, whom the hermit had cured by his nostrums, and of
their wives, who had be come pregnant by virtue of his spiritual
interference. But however it got there, I no sooner set my eyes
on the money, which might be mine without any one near me to say
nay, than the gipsy voice of nature and pedigree spoke within me.
An inextinguishable itch of pilfering tingled in my veins, and
proved that we come into the world with the mark of our descent,
and with our characters about us. I yielded to the temptation
without a struggle; tied up my booty in a canvas bag where we
kept our combs and nightcaps: then, having laid aside the
hermit’s and resumed my foundling’s dress, got clear off from the
hermitage, and hugged my bag as though it had contained the
boundless treasure of the Indies.
You have heard my first exploit, continued Scipio; and I doubt
not but you will expect a succession of similar practices. Your
anticipations will not be disappointed; for there are many such
evidences of genius behind, before I come to those of my actions
which prove me good as well as clever; but I shall come to them,
and you will be convinced by the sequel, that a scoundrel born
may be licked into virtue, as the cub of a bear into shape.
Child as I was, I knew better than to take the Toledo road; it
would have been exposing myself to the hazard of meeting friar
Chrysostom, who would have balanced accounts with me on a very
thriftless principle. I therefore travelled in another direction
leading to the village of Galves, where I stopped at an inn, kept
by a landlady who was a widow of forty, and hung out the bunch of
grapes to a very good purpose. This good woman no sooner kenned
me, than, judging by my dress that I must be a truant from the
orphan school, she asked who I was and whither I was going. I
answered that, having lost my father and mother, I was looking
for a place. Can you read, my dear? said she. I assured her that
I could read, and write too, with the best of them. In point of
fact, I could just form my letters, and join them so as to look a
little like writing; and that was clerkship enough for a village
pothouse. Then I will take you into my service, replied the
hostess. You may earn your board easily enough, by scoring up the
customers, and keeping my ledger. I shall give you no wages,
because this inn is frequented by very genteel company, who never
forget the waiters. You may reckon upon very considerable
perquisites.
I clenched the bargain, reserving to myself, as you may suppose,
the right of emigration whenever my abode at Galves should cease
to be pleasant. No sooner was I settled in my place, than a
weight lay heavy on my mind. I did not wish it to be known that I
had money; and it was no easy matter to devise where it could be
hidden, so as that what was sauce for the goose should not be
sauce for the gander. I was not yet well enough acquainted with
the house to trust the places obviously most proper for such a
deposit. What a source of embarrassment is great wealth! I
determined, however, on a corner of our granary under some straw;
and believing it to be safer there than anywhere else, made
myself as easy about it as I well could.
The household consisted of three servants: a lubberly ostler, a
young Galician chambermaid, and myself. Each of us spunged what
we could upon travellers, whether on foot or on horseback. I
always came in for some small change, when the bill was paid.
Then the equestrians gave something to the ostler, for taking
care of their beasts: but as for our female fellow-servant, the
muleteers who passed that way chucked her under the chin, and
gave her more crowns than we got farthings. I had no sooner
realized a penny, than away it went to the granary, and slept
with its precursors; so that the higher rose my heap, the more
greedy did my little heart become. Sometimes would I kiss the
hallowed images of my idolatry, and look at them with a
devotional glow, which few worshippers feel, but those whose
religion is their gold.
This inordinate passion sent me back and fore to gratify it, at
least thirty times a day. I often met the landlady on the
staircase. She, being naturally of a suspicious temper, had a
mind to find out one day what could carry me every minute to the
corn-loft. She therefore went up and began rummaging about
everywhere, supposing perhaps that it was my receptacle for
articles purloined in the house. Of course she did not forget to
pull the straw about; and behold, there was my bag! Two hands in
a dish and one in a purse, was not one of her proverbs; so that
finding the contents in crowns and pistoles, she thought, or
seemed to think, that the money was lawfully and honestly hers.
At least she had possession, and that is nine points of the law,
though scarcely one of honesty. But to do the thing decently,
after calling me little wretch, little rascal, and so forth, she
ordered the ostler, a fellow without any will but hers, to give
me a hearty flogging; and then turn me out of doors, with this
salt eel for my breakfast, and a lady-like oath that no light-fingered gentry should ever darken her doors. In vain did I
protest and vow that I never wronged my mistress: she affirmed
the direct contrary, and her word would go further than mine at
any time. Thus were friar Chrysostom’s savings transferred from
one thief to a greater thief in the thief-taker.
I wept over the loss of my money, as a father over the death of
his only son: and though my tears could not bring back what I had
lost, they at least answered the purpose of exciting pity in some
people, who saw how bitterly they flowed, and among others in the
parson, who was accidentally going by. He seemed affected by my
sad plight, and took me home with him. There, to gain my
confidence, or rather to pump me, he began soothing my sorrows.
How much this poor child is to be pitied! said he. Is it any
wonder if, thrown upon the wide world at so tender an age, he has
committed a bad action? Grown up men are not always proof against
the flesh or the devil. Then, addressing me, Child, added he,
front what part of Spain do you come, and who are your parents?
You have the look of family about you. Open your heart to me
confidentially, and depend upon it, I never will desert you.
His reverence, by this kind and insinuating language, engaged me
by degrees to tell him all my history, without falsification or
reserve. I owned everything; and thus he moralized on the leading
article of my confession: My little friend, though hermits ought
to lay up such treasures as neither force nor fraud can wrest
from them, that was no excuse for your taking the measure of
punishment into your own hands: by robbing brother Chrysostom,
you nevertheless sinned against that article of the decalogue,
which tells you not to steal; but I will engage to make the
hostess return the money, and will punctually remit it to the
reverend friar at his hermitage: you may therefore make your
conscience perfectly easy on that score. Now, between ourselves,
my conscience was perfectly callous to everything like
compunction with respect to the crime in question. The parson,
who had his own ends to answer, had not done with me yet. My lad,
pursued he, I mean to take you by the hand, and find a good berth
for you. I shall send you to-morrow morning, by the carrier, to
my nephew, a canon of Toledo. He will not refuse, at my request,
to admit you upon his establishment, where they live like so many
sons of the church, rosily, merrily, and fatly, upon the rents of
his prebendal stall: you will be perfectly comfortable there,
take my word for it.
Patronage like this gave me so much encouragement, that I did not
throw away another thought either upon my bag or my whipping. My
mind was wholly occupied with the idea of living rosily, merrily,
and fatly, like a son of the church. The following day, at
breakfast-time, there came, according to orders, a muleteer to
the parsonage, with two mules saddled and bridled. They helped me
to mount one, the muleteer flung his leg over the other, and we
trotted on for Toledo. My fellow-traveller was a good, pleasant
companion, arid desired nothing better than to indulge his humour
at the expense of his neighbour. My little volunteer, said he,
you have a good friend in his reverence, the minister of Galves.
He could not give you a better proof of his kindness, than by
placing you with his nephew the canon, whom I have the honour of
knowing, far beyond all question or comparison, to be the cock of
the chapter, and a hearty one he is. None of your lantern-jawed
saints, with Lent in his face, a cat-of-nine-tails on his back,
and a cholera morbus in his belly. No such thing! Our doctor is
rubicund in the jowl, efflorescent on the nose, with a wicked eye
at a bumper or a girl militant against no earthly pleasure, but
most addicted to the good things of the table. You will be as
snug there as a bug in a blanket.
This hangman of a muleteer, perceiving with what exquisite
satisfaction I took in all this, went on tantalizing me with the
joys of an ecclesiastical life. He never dropped the subject till
we got to the village of Obisa, and stopped there to refresh our
mules. Then, while bustling about the inn, he accidentally
dropped a paper from his pocket, which I was cunning enough to
pick up without his seeing me, and took an opportunity of reading
while he was in the stable. It was a letter addressed to the
governors and superintendents of the orphan school, conceived in
these terms: “Gentlemen, I consider it as an act at once of
charity and of duty, to send you back a little truant; he seems a
shrewd lad enough, and may do very well with good looking after.
By dint of hard and frequent chastisement, I doubt not but you
will ultimately bring him to a sense of his own unworthiness and
your benevolence. May a blessing be vouchsafed on your pious and
charitable labours, for the early extirpation of sin and
wickedness! (Signed) “THE MINISTER OF GALVES.”
When I had finished reading this pleasant letter, which let me
into the good intentions of his reverence the rector, it required
little deliberation to determine what I was to do: from the inn
to the banks of the Tagus, a space of three good miles, was but a
hop, step, and jump. Fear lent me wings to escape from the
governors of the foundling hospital, whither I was absolutely
resolved never to return, having formed principles of taste
diametrically opposite to
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