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

been cured by an astringent. You may

depend on it, I will put you in the way of a good livelihood,

without drawing deep upon your intellectual credit. So much she

better, cried he; wit smells like carrion in my nostrils, or

rather like a pungent and deleterious perfume; fragrant to the

sense, but corrosive to the vitals. I heartily wish, my dear

Fabricio, resumed I, that you may always keep in that mind. Only

wash your hands completely of poetry, and you may depend on it, I

will enable you to keep your head above water without picking or

stealing. In the mean while, added I, slipping a purse of sixty

pistoles into his hand, accept this as a slight instance of my

regard.

 

O friend like the friends in days of yore, cried the son of

barber Nunez, out of his wits with joy and gratitude, it was

heaven itself which sent you into this hospital, whence your

goodness is now discharging me! Before we parted, I gave him my

address, and invited him to come and see me as soon as his health

would permit. He opened his eyes as an oyster does its shell,

when I told him that I lodged under the minister’s roof. O

illustrious Gil Blas! said he, great as Pompey and fortunate as

Sylla, whose lot it is to be hand in glove with the dictators of

modern times! I rejoice most disinterestedly in your good

fortune, because it is so very evident what a noble use you make

of it.

 

CH. VIII. — Gil Blas gets forward progressively in his master’s

affections. Scipio’s return to Madrid, and account of his

journey.

 

THE Count of Olivarez, whom I shall henceforward call my lord

duke, because the king was pleased to confer that dignity on him

about this time, was infested with a weakness which I did not

suffer to pass without taking toll: it was a furious desire of

being beloved. The moment he fancied that any one really liked

him, his heart was caught in a trap. This was not lost upon my

keen sense of character. It was not enough to do precisely as he

ordered; I superadded a zeal in the execution which made him

mine. I laid myself out to his liking in everything, and provided

beforehand for his most eccentric wishes.

 

By conduct like this, which almost always answers, I became by

degrees my master’s favourite; and he, on the other hand, as if

he had got round to my blind side also, wormed himself into my

affections, by giving me his own. So forward did I get into his

good graces, as to halve his confidence with Signor Carnero, his

principal secretary.

 

Carnero had played my game; and that so successfully, as to be

intrusted with the greater mysteries. We two therefore were the

keepers of the prime minister’s conscience, and held the keys of

all his secrets: with this difference, that Carnero was consulted

on state affairs, myself about his private concerns, dividing the

business into two separate departments; and we were each of us

equally pleased with our own. We lived together without jealousy,

and certainly without attachment. I had every reason to be

satisfied with my quarters, where continual intercourse gave me

an opportunity of prying into the duke’s inmost soul, which was a

masked battery to all mankind beside, but plain as a pikestaff to

me, when he no longer questioned the sincerity of my attachment

to hint.

 

Santillane, said he one day, you were witness to the Duke of

Lerma’s possession of an authority, more like that of an absolute

monarch than a favourite minister; and yet I am still happier

than he was at the very summit of his good fortune. He had two

formidable enemies in his own son, the Duke of Uzeda, and in the

confessor of Philip the Third: but there is no one now about the

king who has credit enough to stand in my way, or even, as I am

aware, the slightest inclination to do me mischief.

 

It is true, continued he, that on my accession to the ministry,

it was my first care to remove all hangers-on from about the

prince but those of my own family or connections. By means of

viceroyalties or embassies I got rid of all the nobility who, by

their personal merit, could have interfered with me in the good

graces of the sovereign, whom I mean to engross entirely to

myself; in that I may say at the present moment, no statesman of

the time holds me in check by the ascendancy of his personal

influence. You see, Gil Blas, I open my mind to you. As I have

reason to think that you are mine heart and soul, I have chosen

to put you in possession of everything. You are a clever youth;

with reflection, penetration, and discretion: in short, you are

just the very creature to acquit yourself of all possible little

offices in all possible directions; you are also a young fellow

of very promising parts, and must in the nature of things be in

my interests.

 

There was no standing the attack which these flattering

representations were calculated to make upon the weakly defended

fortress of my philosophy. Unauthorized whims of avarice and

ambition mounted suddenly into my head, and brought forward

certain sentiments of political speculation which were supposed

to have been in abeyance. I gave the minister an assurance that I

should fulfil his intentions to the utmost of my power, and held

myself in readiness to execute without examination or inference

all the orders it might be his pleasure to give me.

 

While I was thus disposed to take fortune in her affable fit,

Scipio returned from his peregrination. I have no long story for

you, said he. The lords of Leyva were delighted at your reception

from the king, and at the manner in which the Count of Olivarez

and you came to understand one another.

 

My friend, said I, you would have delighted them still more, had

you been able to tell them on what a footing I am now with my

lord. My advances since your departure have been prodigious.

Happy man be his dole, my dear master, answered he: my mind

forebodes that we shall cut a figure.

 

Let us change the subject, said I, and talk of Oviedo. You have

been in the Asturias. How did you leave my mother? Ah, sir!

replied he, with an undertaker’s decency of countenance, I have a

melancholy tale to tell you from that quarter. O heaven!

exclaimed I, my mother then is dead! Six months since, said my

secretary, did the good lady pay the debt of nature, and your

uncle, Signor Gil Perez, about the same period.

 

My mother’s death preyed upon my susceptible nature, though in my

childhood I had not received from her those little fondling

indications of maternal love, so necessary to amalgamate with the

more serious convictions of filial duty. The good canon, too,

came in for his share in bringing me up according to the rules of

godliness and honesty. My serious grief was not lasting: but I

never lost sight of a certain tender recollection, whenever the

idea of my dear relations shot across my mind.

 

CH. IX.. — How my lord duke married his only daughter, and to

whom: with the bitter consequences of that marriage.

 

VERY shortly after the son of Coselina’s return, my lord duke

fell into a brown study, and it lasted a complete week. I

conceived, of course, that he was brooding over some great

measure of government; but family concerns were the object of his

musings. Gil Blas, said he one day after dinner, you may perceive

that my mind is a good deal distracted. Yes, my good friend, I am

pondering over an affair of the utmost consequence to my

feelings. You shall know all about it.

 

My daughter, Donna Maria, pursued he, is marriageable, and of

course beset with suitors. The Count de Ni�bl�s, eldest son of

the Duke de Medina Sidonia, head of the Guzman family, and Don

Lewis de Haro, eldest son of the Marquis de Carpio and my eldest

sister, are the two most likely competitors. The latter in

particular is superior in point of merit to all his rivals, so

that the whole court has fixed on him for my son-in-law.

Nevertheless, without entering into private motives for treating

him, as well as the Count de Ni�bl�s, with a refusal, my present

views are fixed upon Don Ramires Nunez de Guzman, Marquis of

Toni, head of the Guzmans d’Abrados, another branch of the

family. To that nobleman and his progeny by my daughter I mean to

leave all my property, and to entail on them the title of Count

d’Olivarez, with the additional dignity of grandee; so that my

grandchildren and their descendants, issue of the Abrados and

Olivarez branch, will be considered as taking precedence in the

house of Guzman.

 

Tell me now, Santillane, added he, do you not like my project?

Excuse me, my lord, pleaded I, with a shrug, the design is worthy

of the genius which gave birth to it: my only fear is, lest the

Duke of Medina Sidonia should think fit to be out of humour at

it. Let him take it as he list, resumed the minister; I give

myself very little concern about that. His branch is no favourite

with me: they have choused that of Abrados out of their

precedence and many of their privileges. I shall be far less

affected by his ill humours than by the disappointment of my

sister, the Marchioness de Carpio, when she sees my daughter slip

through her son’s fingers. But let that be as it may. I am

determined to please myself, and Don Ramires shall be the man; it

is a settled point.

 

My lord duke, having announced this firm resolve, did not carry

it into effect without giving a new proof of his singular policy.

He presented a memorial to the king, entreating him and the queen

in concert, to do him the honour of taking the choice of a

husband for his daughter on themselves, at the same time

acquainting them with the pretensions of the suitors, and

professing to abide by their election; but he took care, when

naming the Marquis de Toral, to evince clearly whither his own

wishes pointed. The king, therefore, with a blind deference for

his minister, answered thus: “I think that Don Ramires Nunez

deserves Donna Maria: but determine for yourself. The match of

your own choosing will be most agreeable to me.” (Signed) THE

KING.

 

The minister made a point of shewing this answer everywhere; and

affecting to consider it as a royal mandate, hastened his

daughter’s marriage with the Marquis de Toral; a death-blow to

the hopes of the Marchioness de Carpio, and the rest of the

Guzmans who had been speculating on an alliance with Donna Maria.

These rival players of a losing game, not being able to break off

the match, put the best face they could upon it, and made the

fashionable world to resound with their costly celebrations of

the event A superficial observer might have fancied that the

whole family was delighted with the arrangement; but the pouters

and ill-wishers were soon revenged most cruelly at my lord duke’s

expense. Donna Maria was brought to bed of a daughter at the end

of ten months; the infant was still-born, and the mother died a

few day afterwards.

 

What a loss for a father who had no eyes, as one may say, but for

his daughter, and in her loss felt the miscarriage of his design

to quash the right of precedence in the branch of Medina Sidonia!

Stung