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

litter for horses.

There might we have foddered for an age, and at last have been

turned out to grass in the galleys, if on the morrow Signor

Manuel Ordonnez had not got wind of our affair, and determined to

release Fabricio; which he could not do without making a general

gaol delivery. He was a man of the first credit in the town: his

interest was exerted for us, and partly by his own influence, and

partly by that of his friends, he obtained our enlargement at the

end of three days. But the period of delivery is always moulting

time with gaol birds; the candlestick, the necklace, the ear-rings, my ring, and the ruby, all was left behind. One could not

help repeating those excellent lines of Virgil, beginning with

Sic vos non vobis.

 

As soon as we were at liberty we returned to our masters. Doctor

Sangrado received me kindly; My poor Gil Blas, said he, it was

but this morning I was acquainted with thy misfortune. I was just

setting about an active canvass for thee. We must derive comfort

from adversity, my friend, and attach ourselves more than ever to

the practice of physic. I affirmed that to be my intention; and

in truth I laid about me. Far from wanting employment, it

happened by a kind providence, as my master had foretold, to be a

very sickly season. The smallpox and a malignant fever took

alternate possession of the town and the suburbs. All the

physicians in Valladolid had their share of business, and we not

the least. We saw eight or ten patients a day; so that the kettle

was kept on the simmer, and the blood in the action of

transpiring. But things will happen cross; they died to a man,

either by our fault or their own. If their case was hopeless, we

were not to blame; and if it was not hopeless, they were. Three

visits to a patient was the length of our tether. About the

second, we sometimes ran foul of the undertaker; or when we had

been more fortunate than usual, the patient had got no further

than the point of death. As I was but a young physician, not yet

hardened to the trade of an assassin, I grieved over the

melancholy issue of my own theory and practice. Sir, said I, one

evening to Doctor Sangrado, I call heaven to witness on the spot

that I have never strayed from your infallible method; and yet I

have never saved a patient: one would think they died out of

spite, and were on the other side of the great medical question.

This very day I came across two of them, going into the country

to be buried. My good lad, replied he, my experience nearly comes

to the same point. It is but seldom I have the pleasure of curing

my kind and partial friends. If I had less confidence in my

principles, I should think my prescriptions had set their faces

against the work they were intended to perform. If you will take

a hint, sir, replied I, we had better vary our system. Let us

give, by way of experiment, chemical preparations to our

patients; the worst they can do is to tread in the steps of our

pure dilutions and our phlebotomizing evacuations. I would

willingly give it a trial, rejoined he, if it were a matter of

indifference, but I have published on the practice of bleeding

and the use of drenches: would you have me cut the throat of my

own fame as an author! Oh! you are in the right, resumed I; our

enemies must not gain this triumph over us; they would say that

you were out of conceit with your own systems, and would ruin

your reputation for consistency. Perish the people, perish rather

our nobility and clergy! But let us go on in the old path. After

all, our brethren of the faculty, with all their tenderness about

bleeding, have no patent for longevity any more than ourselves;

and we may set off their drugs against our specifics.

 

We went on working double tides, and did so much execution, that

in less than six weeks we made as many widows and orphans as the

siege of Troy. The plague must have got into Valladolid by the

number of funerals. Day after day came some father or other to

know what was become of his son, who was last seen in our hands;

or else a stupid fellow of an uncle, who had a foolish hankering

after a deceased nephew. With respect to the nephews and sons, on

whose uncles and fathers we had equalized our system of

destruction, they thought that least said was soonest mended.

Husbands were altogether on their good behaviour, they would not

split a hair about the loss of a wife or two. The real sufferers

to whose reproaches we were exposed, were sometimes quite savage

in their grief; without being mealy-mouthed in their expressions,

they called us blockheads and assassins. I was concerned at their

bad language; but my master, who was up to every circumstance,

listened to their abuse with the utmost indifference. Yet I might

have grown as callous as himself to popular reproach, if heaven,

interposing its shield between the invalids of Valladolid and one

of their scourges, had not providentially raised up an incident

to disgust me with medicine, which from the outset had been

disgusted with me.

 

The idle fellows about town assembled every day in our

neighbourhood for a game at tennis. Among the number was one of

those professed bullies who set up for great Dons, and are the

complete cocks of the tennis-court. He was a Biscayan, and

assumed the title of Don Roderic de Mondragon. His age might be

about thirty. His size was somewhat above the common, but he was

lean and bony. Besides two sparkling little eyes rolling about in

his head, and throwing out defiance against all bystanders, a

very broad nose came in between a pair of red whiskers, which

turned up like a hook as high as the temples. His phraseology was

so rough and uncouth that the very sound of his voice would throw

a quiet man into an ague. This tyrant over both the rackets and

the game was lord paramount in all disputes between the players;

and there was no appeal from his decisions, but at the risk of

receiving a challenge the next day. Precisely as I have drawn

Signor Don Roderic, whom the Don in the foreground of his titles

could never make a gentleman, Signor Don Roderic was sweet upon

the mistress of the tennis-court. She was a woman of forty, in

good circumstances, as charming as forty can well be, just

entering on the second year of her widowhood. I know not how he

made himself agreeable; certainly not by his exterior

recommendations, but probably by that within which passeth show.

However that might be, she took a fancy to him, and began to turn

her thoughts towards the holy state of matrimony; but while that

great event was in agitation, for the punishment of her sins she

was taken with a malignant fever, and with me for a physician.

Had the disorder been ever so slight, my practice would have made

a serious job of it. At the expiration of four days there was not

a dry eye in the tennis-court. The mistress joined the outward-bound colony of my patients, and her family administered to her

effects. Don Roderic, distracted at the loss of his mistress, or

rather disappointed of a good establishment, was not satisfied

with fretting and fuming at me, but swore he would run me through

the body, or even frown me into a nonentity. A good-natured

neighbour apprised me of this vow, with a caution to keep at

home, for fear of coming across this devil of a fellow. This

warning, though taken in good part, was a source of anxiety and

apprehension. I was eternally fancying the enraged Biscayan

laying siege to the outworks of my citadel. There was no getting

a moment’s respite from alarm. This circumstance weaned me from

the practice of medicine, and I thought of nothing but

deliverance from my horrors. On went my embroidered suit once

more. Taking leave of my master, who did all he could to detain

me, I got out of town with the dawn, not heedless of that

terrible Don Roderic, who might waylay me on the road.

 

CH. VI. — His route from Valladolid, with a description of his

fellow-traveller.

 

I TRUDGED on at a great rate, and looked behind from time to

time, to see if that dreadful Biscayan was not following me. My

imagination was so engrossed by the fellow, that he haunted me in

every tree and bush; my heart was in my mouth for fear at every

foot-fall. But I took courage again at the distance of about a

league, and went on more gently towards Madrid, whither I

proposed directing my steps. I had no attachment to Valladolid.

All my regret was at tearing myself from Fabricio, my dear

Pylades, of whom I had not so much as taken my leave. It was no

grievance to give up physic; on the contrary, I prayed heaven to

forgive me for having tampered with it. Yet I did not count over

the contents of my purse with less pleasure, because they were

the wages of murder. In this I took after those ladies who retire

with a fortune to lead pious lives, and think it hard if they may

not fatten religiously on the hard earnings of their libertine

profession. I had, in rials, somewhere about the value of five

ducats, and this was the sum total of my property. With these I

designed repairing to Madrid, where I had no doubt of finding a

good service. Besides, I wished above all things to be in that

magnificent city, the boasted epitome of the world and all its

wonders.

 

While I was recollecting what I had heard of it, and enjoying

beforehand the pleasures it affords, I heard the voice of a man

coming after me, and singing till he had scraped his throat. He

had a wallet on his back, a guitar suspended from his neck, and a

long sword by his side. He got on at such a rate, as soon to

overtake me. Who should it be but one of the two journeymen

barbers with whom I had been in gaol for the adventure of the

ring. We knew one another at once, though we had shifted our

dresses, and were in a thousand marvels at meeting so

unexpectedly on the highway. If I testified my delight at having

such a fellow-traveller, he seemed on his side to feel an excess

of rapture at the renewal of our acquaintance. I told him why I

had left Valladolid, and he trusted his own secret to me in

return, by stating himself to have had a little brush with his

master, on which they had taken an everlasting leave of one

another. Had it been my pleasure, continued he, to have taken up

my abode longer in Valladolid, ten shops would take me in for one

that would have turned me out; since, vanity apart, I may safely

say there is not a barber in all Spain better qualified to shave

all sorts of beards, with the grain or against the grain, and to

curl a pair of whiskers. But I could no longer fight against a

hankering after my native place, whence I departed full ten years

since. I wish to inhale a little of my own country air, and to

learn the present situation of my family. I shall be among them

the day after to-morrow, at a place called Olm�do, a populous