The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗
- Author: Alain René le Sage
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scholastic manner; and, by dint of application, he got at last to
read his breviary out of hand, which he had never been able to do
before. He would have been very glad to have taught me Latin, to
save expense, but, alas! poor Gil Perez! he had never skimmed the
first principles of it in the whole course of his life. I should
not wonder if he was the most ignorant member of the chapter,
though on a subject involving as many possibilities as there were
canons, I presume not to pledge myself for anything like
certainty. To be sure, I have heard it suggested, that he did not
gain his preferment altogether by his learning: but that he owed
it exclusively to the gratitude of some good nuns whose discreet
factor he had been, and who had credit enough to procure him the
order of priesthood without the troublesome ceremony of an
examination.
He was obliged therefore to place me under the correction of a
master, so that I was sent to Doctor Godinez, who had the
reputation of being the most accomplished pedant of Oviedo. I
profited so well under his instructions, that by the end of five
or six years I could read a Greek author or two, and had no very
inadequate conception of the Latin poets. Besides my classical
studies, I applied to logic, which enabled me to become an expert
arguer. I now fell in love with discussions of all kinds to such
an excess, that I stopped his Majesty’s subjects on the high
road, acquaintance or strangers, no matter! and proposed some
knotty point of controversy. Sometimes I fell in with a clan of
Irish, and an altercation never comes amiss to them! That was
your time, if you are fond of a battle. Such gestures! such
grimaces! such contortions! Our eyes sparkling, and our mouths
foaming! Those who did not take us for what we affected to be,
philosophers, must have set us down for madmen.
But let that be as it will, I gained the reputation of no small
learning in the town. My uncle was delighted, because he
prudently considered that I should so much the sooner cease to be
chargeable to him. Come here, Gil Blas, quoth he one day, you are
got to be a fine fellow. You are past seventeen, and. a clever
lad; you must bestir yourself, and get forward in the world. I
think of sending you to the university of Salamanca: with your
wit you will easily get a good post. I will give you a few ducats
for your journey, and my mule, which will fetch ten or twelve
pistoles at Salamanca, and with such a sum at setting out, you
will be enabled to hold up your head till you get a situation.
He could not have proposed to me anything more agreeable: for I
was dying to see a little of life. At the same time, I was not
such a fool as to betray my satisfaction; and when it came to the
hour of parting, by the sensibility I discovered at taking leave
of my dear uncle, to whom I was so much obliged, and by calling
in the stage effect of grief, I so softened the good soul, that
he put his hand deeper into his pocket than he would have done,
could he have pried into all that was passing in the interior of
my hypocritical little heart. Before my departure I took a last
leave of my papa and mamma, who loaded me with an ample
inheritance of good advice. They enjoined me to pray to God for
my uncle, to go honestly through the world, not to engage in any
ill, and above all, not to lay my hands on other people’s
property. After they had lectured me for a good while, they made
me a present of their blessing which was all my patrimony and all
my expectation. As soon as I had received it, I mounted my mule,
and saw the outside of the town.
CH. II — Gil Blas’ alarm on his road to Pegnaflor; his
adventures on his arrival in that town; and the character of the
men with whom he supped.
HERE I am, then, on the other side of Oviedo, in the road to
Pegnaflor, with the world before me, as yet my own master, as
well master of a bad mule and forty good ducats, without
reckoning on a little supplementary cash purloined from my much-honoured uncle. The first thing I did was to let my mule go as
the beast liked, that is to say, very lazily. I dropped the rein,
and taking out my ducats, began to count them backwards and
forwards in my hat. I was out of my wits for joy, never having
seen such a sum of money before, and could not help looking at it
and sifting it through my fingers. I had counted it over about
the twentieth time, when all at once my mule, with head raised,
and ears pricked up, stood stock still in the middle of the high
road. I thought, to be sure, something was the matter; looked
about for a cause, and perceiving a hat upon the ground, with a
rosary of large beads, at the same time heard a lugubrious voice
pronounce these words: Pray, honoured master, have pity on a poor
maimed soldier! Please to throw a few small pieces into this hat;
you shall be rewarded for it in the other world. I looked
immediately on the side whence the voice proceeded, and saw, just
by a thicket, twenty or thirty paces from me, a sort of a
soldier, who had mounted the barrel of a confounded long carbine
on two cross sticks, and seemed to be taking aim at me. At a
sight which made me tremble for the patrimony of the Church
committed to my care, I stopped short, made sure of my ducats,
and taking out a little small change, as I rode by the hat,
placed to receive the charity of those quiet subjects who had not
the courage to refuse it, dropped in my contribution in detail,
to convince the soldier how nobly I dealt by him. He was
satisfied with my liberality, and gave me a blessing for every
kick I gave my mule in my impatience to get out of his way; but
the infernal beast, without partaking in the slightest degree of
my impatience, went at the old steady pace. A long custom of
jogging on fair and softly under my uncle’s weight had
obliterated every idea of that motion called a gallop.
The prospect of my journey was not much improved by this
adventure as a specimen. I considered within myself that I had
yet some distance to Salamanca, and might, not improbably, meet
with something worse. My uncle seemed to have been very imprudent
not to have consigned me to the care of a muleteer. That, to be
sure, was what he ought to have done; but his notion was, that by
giving me his mule, my journey would be cheaper; and that entered
more into his calculation than the dangers in which I might be
involved on the road. To retrieve his error, therefore, I
resolved, if I had the good luck to arrive safe at Pegnaflor, to
offer my mule for sale, and take the opportunity of a muleteer
going to Astorga, whence I might get to Salamanca by a similar
conveyance. Though I had never been out of Oviedo I was
acquainted with the names of the towns through which I was to
pass; a species of information I took care to procure before my
setting out.
I got safe and sound to Pegnaflor, and stopped at the door of a
very decent looking inn. My foot was scarcely out of the stirrup
before the landlord was at my side, overwhelming me with public-house civility. He untied my cloakbag with his own hands, swung
it across his shoulders, and ushered my Honour into a room, while
one of his men led my mule to the stable. This landlord, the most
busy prattler of the Asturias, ready to bother you impertinently
about his own concerns, and, at the same time, with a sufficient
portion of curiosity to worm himself into the knowledge of yours,
was not long in telling me that his name was Andrew Corcuelo;
that he had seen some service as a sergeant in the army, which he
had quitted fifteen months ago, and married a girl of Castropol,
who, though a little tawny or so, knew how to make both ends meet
as well as the best of them. He told me a thousand things besides
which he might just as well have kept private. Thinking himself
entitled, after this voluntary confidence, to an equal share of
mine, he asked me in a breath, and without further preface,
whence I came, whither I was going, and who I was. To all this I
felt myself bound to answer, article by article, because, though
rather abrupt in asking them, he accompanied each question with
so apologetic a bow, beseeching me with so submissive a grimace
not to be offended at his curiosity, that I was drawn in to
gratify it whether I would or no. Thus by degrees did we get into
a long conversation, in the course of which I took occasion to
hint that I had some reasons for wishing to get rid of my mule,
and travel under convoy of a muleteer. He seemed on the whole to
approve of my plan, though he could not prevail with himself to
tell me so briefly; for he introduced his remarks by descanting
on all the possible and probable mischances to which travellers
are liable on the road, not omitting an awkward story now and
then. I thought the fellow would never have done. But the
conclusion of the argument was, that if I wanted to sell my mule,
he knew an honest jockey who would take it off my hands. I begged
he would do me the favour to fetch him, which was no sooner said
than done.
On his return he introduced the purchaser, with a high encomium
on his integrity. We all three went into the yard, and the mule
was brought out to show paces before the jockey, who set himself
to examine the beast from head to foot. His report was bad
enough. To be sure, it would not have been easy to make a good
one; but if it had been the pope’s mule, and this fellow was to
cheapen the bargain, it would have been just the same: nay, to
speak with all due reverence, if he had been asked to give an
opinion of the pope’s great toe, from that disparaging habit of
his, he would have pronounced it no better than the toe of any
ordinary man. He laid it down, therefore, as a principle, that
the mule had all the defects a mule could have: appealing to the
landlord for a confirmation of his judgment, who, doubtless, had
reasons of his own for not controverting his friend’s assertion.
Well! says the jockey, with an air of in difference, What price
have you the conscience to ask for this devil of an animal? After
such a panegyric, and master Corcuelo’s certificate, whom I was
fool enough to take for a fair-dealing man and a good judge of
horse-flesh, they might have had the mule for nothing. I
therefore told the dealer that I threw myself on his mercy: he
must fix his own sum, and I should expect no more. On this he
began to affect the gentleman, and answered that I had found out
his weak side
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