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

the most manly action of

his life. For this reason, as a set-off against his hen-pecked

cowardice, and that I might the more easily swallow this bitter

dose, he gave me fifty ducats, and took me with him next morning

to the Marchioness of Chaves, telling that lady before my face,

that I was a young man of unexceptionably good character, and

very high in his good graces, but that as certain family reasons

prevented him from continuing me on his own establishment, he

should esteem it as a favour if she would take me on hers. After

such an introduction, I was retained at once as her appendage,

and found myself, I scarcely knew how, established in another

household.

 

CH. VIII. — The Marchioness of Chaves: her character, and that

of her company.

 

THE Marchioness of Chaves was a widow of five-and-thirty, tall,

handsome, and well-proportioned. She enjoyed an income of ten

thousand ducats, without the incumbrance of a nursery. I never

met with a lady of fewer words, nor one of a more solemn aspect.

Yet this exterior did not prevent her from being set up as the

cleverest woman in all Madrid. Her great assemblies, attended by

people of the first quality, and by men of letters who made a

coffee house of her apartments, contributed perhaps more than

anything she said to give her the reputation she had acquired.

But this is a point on which it is not my province to decide. I

have only to relate, as her historian, that her name carried with

it the idea of superior genius, and that her house was called, to

distinguish it from the ordinary societies in town, The

Fashionable Institution for Literature, Taste, and Science.

 

In point of fact, not a day passed, but there were readings

there, sometimes of dramatic pieces, and sometimes in other

branches of poetry. But the subjects were always selected from

the graver muses; wit and humour were held in the most sovereign

contempt. Comedy, however spirited; a novel, however pointed in

its satire or ingenious in its fable, such light productions as

these were treated as weak efforts of the brain without the

slightest claim to patronage; whereas on the contrary the most

microscopical work in the serious style, whether ode, pastoral,

or sonnet, was trumpeted to the skies as the most illustrious

effort of a learned and poetical age. It not unfrequently fell

out, that the public reversed the decrees of this chancery for

genius: nay, they had sometimes the gross illbreeding to hiss

the very pieces which had been sanctioned by this court of

criticism.

 

I was chief manager of the establishment, and my office consisted

in getting the drawing-room ready to receive the company, in

setting the chairs in order for the gentlemen, and the sofas for

the ladies: after which I took my station on the landing-place to

bawl out the names of the visitors as they came up stairs, and

usher them into the circle. The first day, an old piece of family

furniture, who was stationed by my side in the antechamber, gave

me their description with some humour, after I had shown them

into the room. His name was Andrew Molina. He had a good deal of

mother’s wit, with a flowing vein of satire, much gravity of

sarcasm, and a happy knack at hitting off characters. The first

corner was a bishop. I roared out his lordship’s name, and as

soon as he was gone in, my nomenclator told me — That prelate

is a very curious gentleman. He has some little influence at

court; but wants to persuade the world that he has a great deal.

He presses his service on every soul he comes near, and then

leaves them completely in the lurch. One day he met with a

gentleman in the presence-chamber who bowed to him. He laid hold

of him, and squeezing his hand, assured him, with an inundation

of civilities, that he was altogether devoted to his lordship.

For goodness’ sake, do not spare me; I shall not die in my bed

without having first found an opportunity of making you my

debtor. The gentleman returned his thanks with all becoming

expressions of gratitude, and when they were at some distance

from one another, the obsequious churchman said to one of his

attendants in waiting — I ought to know that man; I have some

floating, indistinct idea of having seen him somewhere.

 

Next after the bishop, came the son of a grandee. When I had

introduced him into my lady’s room — This nobleman, said Molina,

is also an original in his way. You are to take notice that he

often pays a visit, for the express purpose of talking over some

urgent business with the friend on whom he calls, and goes away

again without once thinking on the topic he came solely to

discuss. But, added my showman on the sight of two ladies, here

are Donna Angela de Penafiel and Donna Margaretta de Montalvan.

This pair have not a feature of resemblance to each other. Donna

Margaretta prides herself on her philosophical acquirements; she

will hold her head as high as the most learned head among the

doctors of Salamanca, nor will the wisdom of her conceit ever

give up the point to the best reasons they can render. As for

Donna Angela, she does not affect the learned lady, though she

has taken no unsuccessful pains in the improvement of her mind.

Her manner of talking is rational and proper, her ideas are novel

and ingenious, expressed in polite, significant, and natural

terms. This latter portrait is delightful, said I to Molina; but

the other, in my opinion, is scarcely to be tolerated in the

softer sex. Not over bearable indeed! replied he with a sneer:

even in men it does but expose them to the lash of satire. The

good marchioness herself, our honoured lady, continued he, she

too has a sort of a philosophical looseness. There will be fine

chopping of logic there to-day! God grant the mysteries of

religion may not be invaded by these disputants.

 

As he was finishing this last sentence, in came a withered bit of

mortality, with a grave and crabbed look. My companion shewed him

no mercy. This fellow, said he, is one of those pompous,

unbending spirits who think to pass for men of profound genius,

under favour of a few commonplaces extracted out of Seneca; yet

they are but shallow coxcombs when one comes to examine them

narrowly. Then followed in the train a spruce figure, with

tolerable person and address, to say nothing of a troubled air

and manner, which always supposes a plentiful stock of self-sufficiency. I inquired who this was. A dramatic poet! said

Molina. He has manufactured an hundred thousand verses in his

time, which never brought him in the value of a groat; but as a

set-off against his metrical failure, he has feathered his nest

very warmly by six lines of humble prose: you will wonder by what

magic touch a fortune could be made

 

And so I did; but a confounded noise upon the staircase put verse

and prose completely out of my head. Good again! exclaimed my

informer: here is the licentiate Campanario. He is his own

harbinger before ever he makes his appearance. He sets out from

the very street door in a continued volley of conversation, and

you hear how the alarm is kept up till he makes his retreat. In

good sooth, the vaulted roof re-echoed with the organ of the

thundering licentiate, who at length exhibited the case in which

the pipes were contained. He brought a bachelor of his

acquaintance by way of accompaniment, and there was not a sotto

voce passage during the whole visit. Signor Campanario, said I to

Molina, is to all appearance a man of very fine conversation.

Yes, replied my sage instructor, the gentleman has his lucky

hits, and a sort of quaintness that might pass for humour; he

does very well in a mixed company. But the worst of it is, that

incessant talking is one of his most pardonable errors. He is a

little too apt to borrow from himself; and as those who are

behind the scenes are not to be dazzled by the tinsel of the

property-man, so we know how to separate a certain volubility and

buffoonery of manner from sterling wit and sense. The greater

part of his good things would be thought very bad ones, if

submitted, without their concomitant grimaces, to the ordeal of a

jest book.

 

Other groups passed before us, and Molina touched them with his

wand. The marchioness too came in for a magic rap over the

knuckles. Our lady patroness, said he, is better than might be

expected for a female philosopher. She is not dainty in her

likings; and bating a whim or two, it is no hard matter to give

her satisfaction, Wits and women of quality seldom approach so

near the atmosphere of good sense; and for passion, she scarcely

knows what it is. Play and gallantry are equally in her black

books: dear conversation is her first and sole delight. To lead

such a life would be little better than penance to the common run

of ladies. Molina’s character of my mistress established her at

once in my good graces. And yet, in the course of a few days, I

could not help suspecting that, though not dainty in her likings,

she knew what passion was, and that a foul copy of gallantry

delighted her more than the fairest conversation.

 

One morning, during the mysteries of the toilette, there

presented himself to my notice a little fellow of forty,

forbidding in his aspect, more filthy if possible than Pedro de

Moya the bookworm, and verging in no marketable measure towards

deformity. He told me he wanted to speak with my lady

marchioness. On whose business? quoth I. On my own, quoth he,

somewhat snappishly. Tell her I am the gentleman; … . she

will understand you; … . about whom she was talking yesterday

with Donna Anna de Velasco. I went before him into my lady’s

apartment, and gave in his name. The marchioness all at once

shrieked out her satisfaction, and ordered me to show him in. It

was not courtesy enough to point to a chair, and bid him sit

down: but the attendants, forsooth, her own maids about her

person were to withdraw, so that the little hunchback, with

better luck than falls to the lot of many a taller man, had the

field entirely to himself, as lord paramount. As for the girls

and myself, we could not help tittering a little at this

uncouthly concerted duet, which lasted nearly an hour: when my

patroness dismissed his little lordship, with such a profusion of

farewells and God-be-with-you’s, as sufficiently evinced her

thankfulness for the entertainment she had received.

 

The conversation had, in fact, been so edifying, that in the

afternoon she seized a private opportunity of whispering in my

ear — Gil Blas, when the short gentleman comes again, you may

shew him up the back stairs; there is no need of parading him

along a line of staring servants. I did as I was ordered. When

this epitome of humanity knocked at the door, and that hour was

no further off than the next morning, we threaded all the bye

passages to the place of assignation. I played the same modest

part two or three times in the very innocence of my soul, without

the most distant guess that the material system could form any

part of their philosophy. But that hound-like snuff at an ill

construction, with which the devil has armed the noses of the

most charitable, put me on the scent of a very whimsical game,

and I concluded either