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

all his rivals, past, present, and to come. I

came into his terms, in the hope of being well paid for my

complaisance. There was no deficiency on that score. On the very

next morning, I received presents from him, which were followed

up by a long train of kindred attentions. I was afraid of not

being able to hold in my chains a man of his exalted rank: and

this apprehension was the better founded, because it was a matter

of notoriety, that he had escaped from the clutches of several

celebrated beauties, whose chains he had worn, only for the

purpose of breaking. But for all that, so far from surfeiting on

the relish of my kindness, his appetite grew by what it fed on.

In short, I found out the secret of entertaining him, and

impounding his heart, naturally roving, so that it should not go

astray according to its usual volatility.

 

He had now been my admirer for three months, and I had every

reason to flatter myself that the arrangement would be lasting,

when a lady of my acquaintance and myself happened to go to an

assembly, where the duchess his wife was of the party. We were

invited to a concert of vocal and instrumental music. We

accidentally seated ourselves too near the duchess, who took it

into her head to be affronted, that I should exhibit my person in

a place where she was. She sent me word by one of her women, that

she should take it as a favour if I would quit the room

immediately. I sent back an answer, just as saucy as the message.

The duchess, irritated to fury, laid her wrongs before her

husband, who came to me in person, and said: Retire, Lucinda.

Though noblemen of the first rank attach themselves to pretty

playthings like yourself, it is highly unbecoming in you to

forget your proper distance. If we love you better than our

wives, we honour our wives more than you: whenever, therefore,

your insolence shall go so far as to set yourselves up for their

rivals under their very noses, you will always be mortified, and

made to know your places.

 

Fortunately the duke held his cruel language to me in so low a

tone of voice as not to have been overheard by the people about

us. I withdrew in deep confusion, and cried with vexation at

having incurred such an affront. At once, to crown my shame and

aggravate my chastisement, the actors and actresses got hold of

the story on the very same evening. To do them justice, these

gentry must contrive to entertain a familiar spirit, whose

business is to fly about, and whisper in the ear of one whatever

falls out amiss to the other. Suppose, for instance, that an

actor gets drunk and makes a fool of himself; or an actress gets

hold of a rich cully and makes a fool of him! The green-room is

sure to ring with all the particulars, and a few more than are

true. All my kindred of the sock and buskin were informed at once

of what had happened at the concert, and a blessed life they led

me with their quips and quiddities. Never was there charity like

theirs. Without beginning at home, heaven only knows where it

ends! But I held myself too high to be affected by their jibes

and jeers: nor did even the loss of the Duke de Medina Coeli hang

heavy on my spirits; for true it was, I never saw him more at my

toilette, but learned, a very short time after, that he had got

into the trammels of a little warbler.

 

When a theatrical lady has the good luck to be in fashion, she

may change her lover as often as her petticoat: and one noble

fool, should he even recover his wits at the end of three days,

serves excellently well for a decoy to his successor. No sooner

was it buzzed about Madrid, that the duke had raised the siege,

than a new host of would-be conquerors appeared before the

trenches. The very rivals whom I had sacrificed to his wishes,

looking at my charms through the magnifying medium of delay and

disappointment, came back again in crowds to encounter new

caprices; to say nothing of a thousand fresh hearts, ready to

bargain on the mere report of my being to let. I had never been

so exclusively the mode. Of all the men who put in for being

cajoled by me, a portly German, belonging to the Duke of Ossuna’s

household, seemed to bid highest. Not that his personal

attractions were by any means the most catching; but then there

were a thousand amiable pistoles on the list of candidates,

scraped together by perquisites in his master’s service, and

turned adrift with the prodigality of a prince, in the hope of

becoming my favoured lover. This fat pigeon to be plucked was by

name Brutandorf. As long as his pockets were lined, his reception

was warm: empty purses meet.with fastened doors. The principles

on which my friendship rested were not altogether to his taste.

He came to the play to look after me during the performance. I

was behind the scenes. It was his humour to load me with

reproaches; it was mine to laugh in his face. This provoked his

boorish wrath, and he gave me a box on the ear, like a clumsy-fisted German as he was. I set up a loud scream: the business of

the stage was suspended. I came forward to the front, and,

addressing the Duke of Ossuna, who was at the play on that

occasion with his lady duchess, begged his protection from the

German gallantry of his establishment. The duke gave orders for

our proceeding with the piece, and intimated that he would hear

the parties after the curtain had dropped. At the conclusion of

the play I presented myself in all the dreary pomp of tragedy

before the duke, and laid open my griefs in all the majesty of

woe. As for my German pugilist, his defence was on a level with

his provocation; so far from being sorry for what he had done,

his fingers itched to give me another dressing. The cause being

heard pro and con, the Duke of Ossuna said to his Scandinavian

savage: Brutandorf I dismiss you from my service, and beg never

to see anything more of you, not because you have given a box on

the ear to an actress, but for your failure in respect to your

master and mistress, in having presumed to interrupt the progress

of the play in their presence.

 

This decision was a bitter pill for me to swallow. It was high

treason against my histrionic majesty, that the German was not

turned off on the ground of having insulted me. It seemed

difficult to conceive the possibility of a greater crime than

that of insulting a principal actress: and where crimes are

parallel, punishments should tally. The retribution in this case

would have been exemplary; and I expected no less. This

unpleasant occurrence undeceived me, and proved, to my

mortification, that the public distinguished between the actors

and the personages they may chance to enact. On this conviction,

my pride revolted at the theatre: I resolved to give up my

engagements to go and live at a distance from Madrid. I fixed on

the city of Valencia for the place of my retreat, and went

thither under a feigned character, with a property of twenty

thousand ducats in money and jewels: a sum in my mind more than

sufficient to maintain me for the remainder of my days, since it

was my purpose to lead a retired life. I rented a small house at

Valencia, and limited my establishment to a female servant and a

page, who were as ignorant of my birth, parentage, and education,

as the rest of the town. I gave myself out for the widow of an

officer belonging to the king’s household, and intimated that I

had made choice of Valencia for my residence, on the report that

it was one of the most agreeable neighbourhoods in Spain. I saw

very little company, and maintained so reserved a deportment,

that there never was the slightest suspicion of my having been an

actress. Yet, not withstanding all the pains I took to hide

myself from the garish eye of day, I had worse success against

the piercing ken of a gentleman, who had a country seat near

Paterna. He was of an ancient family, in person genteel and

manly, from five-and-thirty to forty years of age, nobly

connected, but scandalously in debt; a contradiction in the

vocabulary of honour, neither more unaccountable nor uncommon in

the kingdom of Valencia, than what takes place every day in other

parts of the civilized world.

 

This gentleman of a generation or two before the present, finding

my person to his liking, was desirous of knowing if in other

respects I was a commodity for his market. He set every engine at

work to inquire into the most minute particulars, and had the

pleasure to learn from general report, that I was a warm widow

with a comfortable jointure, and a person little, if anything,

the worse for wear. It struck him that this was just the match;

so that in a very short time an old lady came to my house,

telling me, from him, that with equal admiration of my virtues

and my charms, he laid himself and his fortune at my feet, and

was ready to lead me to the altar, if I could condescend so far

as to become his wife. I required three days to make up my mind

on the subject. In this interval, I made inquiries about the

gentleman; and hearing a good character of him, notwithstanding

the deranged state of his finances, it was my determination to

marry him without more ado, so that the preliminaries were soon

ratified by a definitive treaty.

 

Don Manuel de Xerica, for that was my husband’s name, took me

immediately after the ceremony to his castle, which had an air of

antiquity highly flattering to his family pride. He told a story

about one of his ancestors who built it in days of yore, and

because it was not founded the day before yesterday, jumped to a

conclusion that there was not a more ancient house in Spain than

that of Xerica. But nobility, like perishable merchandise, will

run to decay; the castle, shored up on this side and on that, was

in the very agony of tumbling to pieces: what a buttress for Don

Manuel and for his old walls was his marriage with me! More than

half my savings were laid out on repairs; and the residue was

wanted to set us going in a genteel style among our country

neighbours. Behold me, then, you who can believe it, landed on a

new planet, transformed into the presiding genius of a castle,

the Lady Bountiful of my parish: our stage machinery could never

have furnished such a change! I was too good an actress not to

have supported my new rank and dignity with appropriate grace. I

assumed high airs, theatrical grandeurs, a most dignified strut

and demeanour; all which made the bumpkins conceive a wonderful

idea of my exalted origin. How would they not have tickled their

fancies at my expense, had they known the real truth of the case!

The gentry of the neighbourhood would have scoffed at me most

unmercifully, and the country people would have been much more

chary of the respect they shewed me.

 

It was now near six years that I had lived very happily with Don

Manuel, when he ended ways, means, and life together. My legacy

consisted of a broken fortune to splice, and your sister