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

you are evidently in a good

deal of agitation; may your faithful servant ask on what account?

Has anything happened out of the common way? The young gallant

smiled at so home a question, and owned candidly that he had just

been engaged in a serious conversation with the Marchioness of

Almenara. I will lay a wage; said I, laughing outright, that this

moppet of threescore and ten, this girl in her second childhood,

has been unfolding to you all the secret movements of a tender,

susceptible heart. Do not make a jest of it, answered he; for the

fact is, my friend, that the Marchioness is seriously in love

with me. She told me that the narrowness of my circumstances was

as well known to her as the nobility of my birth; that she had

taken a liking to me, and was determined to place me at my ease

by marriage, since she could not decently lay her fortune at my

feet on any other terms. That this marriage would expose her to

public ridicule, she professed to have considered; that scandal

would be busy at her expense; in short, that she should pass for

an old fool with an ambitious eye and a liquorish constitution.

No matter for that! She was not to be awed from the career of her

humour by quips and sentences: her only alarm was, lest I should

either make sport of her intentions, or torment her more

grievously by my aversion.

 

Such, continued the knight, was the substance of the

Marchioness’s declaration, and I am the more astonished at it,

because she is the most prudent and sensible woman in Cordova;

wherefore I answered by expressing my surprise at her honouring

me with the offer of her hand, since she had hitherto persisted

in her resolution of remaining in a state of widowhood. To this

she replied, that having a considerable fortune, it would give

her pleasure to share it in her lifetime with a man of honour to

whom she was attached. To all appearance then, rejoined I, you

have made up your mind to take a lover’s leap. Can you doubt

about that? answered he. The Marchioness is immensely rich, with

excellent qualities both of head and heart. It would be the

extreme of folly and fastidiousness to let so advantageous a

settlement slip through my fingers.

 

I entirely approved my master’s purpose of profiting by so fine

an opportunity to make his fortune, and even advised him to bring

the matter to a short issue, for fear of a change in the wind.

Happily the lady had the business more at heart than myself; her

orders were given so effectually, that the necessary forms and

ceremonies were soon got over. When it became known in Cordova

that the old Marchioness of Almenara was getting herself ready to

be the bride of young Don Manriquez de Medrano, the wits began

breaking their odd quirks and remnants in derision of the widow;

but though she heard her own detractions, she did not put them to

mending; the town might talk as they pleased; for when she said

she would die a widow, she did not think to live till she were

married. The wedding was solemnized with a publicity and

splendour which furnished fresh food for evil tongues. The bride,

said they, might at least have had the modesty to dispense with

noise and ostentation, so unbecoming in an old widow who marries

a young husband.

 

The Marchioness, far enough from yielding to the suggestions of

shame at her own inconsistency, or the disparity of their ages,

yielded herself up without constraint to the expression of the

most lively joy. She gave a grand concert and supper, with a ball

afterwards, and invited all the principal families in Cordova.

Just before the close of the ball, the new-married couple

disappeared, and were shewn to an apartment, where, with no other

witnesses but her own maid and myself she spoke to my master in

these terms: — Don Manriquez, this is your apartment; mine is in

another part of the house: we will pass the night in separate

rooms, and will live together by day like mother and son. At

first the knight did not know what to make of this; he thought

that the lady was only trying his temper, as if her coldness must

be wooed to kindness, and her love, like her pardon, not

unsought, be won. Imagining, therefore, that good manners

required, at least, the shew of passion, he made his advances,

and offered, according to the laws of amorous suit enacted in

such cases, to assist in the disencumbering duties of her toilet;

but, so far from allowing him to interfere with the province of

her servant, she pushed him back with a serious air, saying:

Hold, Don Manriquez; if you take me for one of those sweet-toothed old women who marry a second time from mere incontinence,

you do me a manifest injustice: my proposals were not fraught

with conditions of hard service as the tenure of our nuptial

contract; the gift of my heart was unmixed with sensual dross,

and your gratitude is only drawn upon for returns of pure and

platonic friendship. After this explanation, she left my master

and me in our apartment, and withdrew to her own with her

attendant, forbidding the bridegroom, in the most positive

manner, to attempt retiring with her.

 

After her departure, it was some time before we recovered from

our surprise at what we had just heard. Scipio, said my master,

could you ever have believed that the Marchioness would have

talked in such a strain? What think you of so philosophic a

bride? I think, sir, answered I, that she is a phoenix among the

brood of Hymen. It is for all the world like a good living

without parochial duties. For my part, replied Don Manriquez,

there is nothing so much to my taste as a wife of modest

pretensions; and I mean to make her amends for the trophy she has

raised to unadulterated esteem, by all the delicate attentions in

my power to pay. We kept up the subject of the lady’s moderation

till it was full time to separate. My quarters were fixed in an

ante room with a bookcase bedstead; my master’s in an elegant

bedchamber with every appurtenance except one: but however

necessary it might be to play the disappointed bridegroom, I am

much mistaken if in the bottom of his soul he was half so much

afraid of sleeping by himself as of being encumbered with a bed-fellow.

 

The rejoicings began again on the following day, and the bride

was so jocund on the occasion, that the bolts of the fools among

her visitors were not soon shot. She was the first to laugh at

all their pointless jokes; nay, she even set the little wits to

work, by giving them an example of pleasantry, which they were

very little able to follow. The happy man, on his part, seemed to

be very little less happy than his partner; and one would have

sworn, judging by the glance of satisfaction which accompanied

his language and deportment, that he liked mutton better than

lamb. This well-matched pair had a second conversation in the

evening; and then it was decided that without interfering in the

least with one another, they should live together just on the

same footing as they had lived before marriage. At all events,

much credit must be given to Don Manriquez on one account: he

did, from delicate consideration towards his wife, what few

husbands would have done under his circumstances, for he

discarded a little sempstress of whom he was very fond, and who

was very fond of him, because he did not choose to keep up a

connection insulting to the feelings of a lady so studious of

his.

 

While he was furnishing such unusual testimonies of gratitude to

his elderly benefactress, she overpaid and doubly paid her debt

of obligation, even without diving into its nature or extent. She

gave him the master key of her strong box, which was better

provided than that of Velasquez. Though she had reduced her

establishment during widowhood, it was now replaced upon the same

footing as in the lifetime of her first husband; the complement

of household servants was enlarged, the stud and equipages were

in the very first style; in a word, by her generosity and

kindness, the most beggarly knight belonging to the order of

Alcantara became the most monied member of the fraternity. You

may perhaps be disposed to ask me, how much I was in pocket by

all that; and my answer is, fifty pistoles from my mistress, and

a hundred from my master, who, moreover, appointed me his

secretary, with a salary of four hundred crowns; nay, his

confidence was so unbounded, that I was fixed on to fill the

office of treasurer.

 

Treasurer! cried I, interrupting Scipio at the very idea, and

bursting into an immoderate fit of laughter. Yes, sir, replied

he, with a cool, unflinching seriousness; you are perfectly

right, treasurer was the word; and I may venture to say that the

duties of the office were executed without the slightest occasion

for a committee of inquiry. True it is that the balance may be

somewhat against me, for I was always in the habit of overdrawing

my wages; and as the firm was dissolved somewhat suddenly, it is

by no means impossible that the balance of my cash account might

be on the wrong side: but, at all events, it was my last slip;

and since that time my ways have been ways of uprightness and

honesty.

 

Thus was I, continued this son of a gipsy, secretary and

treasurer to Don Manriquez, who, to all appearance, was as happy

in me as I in him, when he received a letter from Toledo,

announcing that his aunt, Donna Theodora Moscoso, was on her last

legs. He was so much affected by the news, as to set out

instantly and pay his duty to that lady, who had been more than a

mother to him for several years. I attended him on the journey

with only two under-servants; we were all mounted on the best

horses in the stable, and reached Toledo without loss of time,

where we found Donna Theodora in a state to warrant our hopes

that she would not, at present, weigh anchor on her outward bound

voyage; and, in fact, our judgment on her case, though point

blank in contradiction to that of an old physician who attended

her, proved by the event that we knew at least as much of the

matter as he did.

 

While the health of our venerable relative was improving from day

to day, less, perhaps, from the effect of the prescriptions than

in consequence of her dear nephew’s presence, your worthy friend

the treasurer passed his time in the pleasantest manner possible,

with some young people whose acquaintance was admirably

calculated to ventilate the confined cash in his pocket.

Sometimes they enticed me to the tennis-court, and took me in for

a game: on those occasions, not being quite so steady a player as

my master, Don Abel, I lost much oftener than I won. By degrees

play became a passion with me; and if the taste had been suffered

to gain complete possession, it would doubtless have laid me

under the necessity of drawing bills of accommodation on the

family bank; but happily love stepped in, and saved the credit

both of the bank and of my principles. One day, passing along

near the church of the Epiphany, I espied through a lattice with

the drapery drawn up, a young girl who might well be called a

thing divine, for nothing natural was ever seen so lovely. I

would lay on