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

without loss of time. No pains were

spared to get into Mascarini’s good graces; and the design was

not difficult to accomplish. Delighted to find his friendship

sought by a man possessing the affections of the prince, he

advanced half way to meet my overtures. His house was always open

to me, my intercourse with his lady was unrestrained; and I have

no hesitation in affirming my measures to have been taken so

well, as to have precluded the slightest suspicion of the embassy

intrusted to my management. It is true, he had but a small share

of the Italian jealousy, relying as he did on the virtue of his

Lucretia; so that he often shut himself up in his closet, and

left me alone with her. I entered at once into the pith and

marrow of my subject. The grand duke’s passion was my topic with

the lady; and I told her that the motive of my visits was only to

plead for that prince. She did not seem to be over head and ears

in love with him; and yet, methought, vanity forbade her to frown

decisively on his addresses. She took a pleasure in listening to

his sighs, without sighing in concert. A certain propriety of

heart she had; but then she was a woman; and it was obvious that

her rigour was giving way insensibly to the triumphant image of a

sovereign, bound in the fetters of her resistless charms. In

short, the prince had good reason to flatter himself that he

might dispense with the illbreeding of a Tarquin, and yet bend

Lucretia to a compliance with his longings. An incident, however,

the most unexpected in the annals of romance, blasted his

flattering prospects; in what manner you shall hear.

 

I am naturally free and easy with the women. This constitutional

assurance, whether a blessing or a curse, was ripened into

inveterate habit among the Turks. Lucretia was a pretty woman. I

forgot that I was courting by proxy, and assumed the tone of a

principal. Nothing could exceed the warmth and gallantry with

which I offered my services to the lady. Far from appearing

offended at my boldness, or silencing me by a resentful answer,

she only said with a sarcastic smile: Own the truth, Don Raphael;

the grand duke has pitched upon a very faithful and zealous

agent. You serve him with an integrity not sufficiently to be

commended. Madam, said I in the same strain, let us not examine

things with too much nicety. A truce, I beseech you, with moral

discussions; they are not of my element: good honest passion

tallies better with our natures. I do not believe myself, after

all, the first prince’s confidant who has ousted his master in an

affair of gallantry; your great lords have often dangerous

rivals, in more humble messengers than myself. That may be,

replied Lucretia: but a haughty temper stands with me in the

place of virtue, and no one under the degree of a prince shall

ever sully these charms. Regulate your behaviour accordingly,

added she in a tone of serious severity, and let us change the

subject. I willingly bury your presumption in oblivion, provided

you never hold similar discourse to me again: if you do, you may

repent of it.

 

Though this was a comment of some importance on my text, and

ought to have been heedfully conned over, it was no bar to my

still entertaining Mascarini’s wife with my passion. I even

pressed her with more importunity than heretofore, for a kind

consent to my tender entreaties; and was rash enough to feel my

ground, by some little personal freedoms. The lady then, offended

at my words, and still more at my Mahometan quips and cranks,

gave a complete set down to my assurance. She threatened to

acquaint the grand duke with my impertinence; and declared she

would make a point of his punishing me as I deserved. These

menaces bristled up my spirit in return. My love turned at once

into hatred, and determined me to revenge myself for the contempt

with which Lucretia had treated me. I went in quest of her

husband; and after having bound him by oath not to betray me, I

informed him of his wile’s correspondence with the prince, and

failed not to represent her as distractedly enamoured of him, by

way of heightening the interest of the scene. The minister, lest

the plot should become too intricately entangled, shut his wife

up, without any law but his own will, in a secret apartment,

whore he placed her under the strict guard of confidential

persons. While she was thus kept at bay by the watch-dogs of

jealousy, who prevented her from acquainting the grand duke with

her situation, I announced to that prince, with a melancholy air,

that he must think no longer of Lucretia. I told him that

Mascarini had doubtless discovered all, since he had taken it

into his head to keep a guard over his wife: that I could not

conceive what had induced him to suspect me, as I flattered

myself with having always behaved according to the most approved

rules of discretion in such cases. The lady might, I suggested,

have been beforehand, and owned all to her husband; and had

perhaps, in concert with him, suffered herself to be immured, in

order to lie hid from a pursuit so dangerous to her virtue. The

prince appeared deeply afflicted at my relation. I was not

unmoved by his distress, and repented more than once of what I

had done; but it was too late to retract. Besides, I must

acknowledge, a spiteful joy tingled in my veins, when I meditated

on the distressed condition of the disdainful fair, who had

spurned my vows.

 

I was feeding with impunity on the pleasure of revenge, so

palatable to all the world, but most of all to Spaniards, when

one day the grand duke, chatting with five or six nobles of his

court and myself, said to us: In what manner would you judge it

fitting for a man to be punished, who should have abused the

confidence of his prince, and designed to step in between him and

his mistress? The best way, said one of the courtiers, would be

to have him torn to pieces by four horses. Another gave it as his

verdict, that he should be soundly beaten, till he died under the

blows of the executioner. The most tender-hearted and merciful of

these Italians, with comparative lenity towards the culprit,

wished only just to admonish him of his fault, by throwing him

from the top of a tower to the bottom. And Don Raphael, resumed

the grand duke after a pause, what is his opinion? The Spaniards,

in all likelihood, would improve upon our Italian severity, is a

case of such aggravated treachery.

 

I fully understood, as you may well suppose, that Mascarini had

not kept his oath, or that his wife had devised the means of

acquainting the prince with what had passed between her and me.

My countenance sufficiently betokened my inward agitation. But

for all that, suppressing as well as I could my rising emotion

and alarm, I replied to the grand duke in a steady tone of voice

— My lord, the Spaniards are more generous; under such

circumstances, they would pardon the unworthy betrayer of his

trust, and by that act of unmerited goodness would kindle in his

soul an everlasting abhorrence of his own villany. Yes, truly,

said the prince, and I fed in my own breast a similar spirit of

forbearance. Let the traitor then be pardoned; since I have

myself only to blame for having given my confidence to a man of

whom I had no knowledge, but, on the contrary, much ground of

suspicion, according to the current of common report. Don

Raphael, added he, my revenge shall be confined to this single

interdict. Quit my dominions immediately, and never appear again

in my presence. I withdrew in all haste, less hurt at my

disgrace, than delighted to have got off so cheaply. The very

next day I embarked in a Barcelona ship, just setting sail from

the port of Leghorn on its return.

 

At this period of his history I interrupted Don Raphael to the

following effect. For a man of shrewdness, methinks you were not

a little off your guard, in trusting yourself at Florence for

even so short a time, after having discovered the prince’s love

of Lucretia to Mascarini. You might well have foreboded that the

grand duke would not be long in getting to the knowledge of your

duplicity. Your observation is very just, answered the well-matched son of so eccentric a mother as Lucinda: and for that

reason, not trusting to the minister’s promise of screening me

from his master’s indignation, it had been my intention to

disappear without taking leave.

 

I got safe to Barcelona, continued he, with the remnant of the

wealth I had brought from Algiers; but the greater part had been

squandered at Florence in enacting the Spanish gentleman. I did

not stay long in Catalonia. Madrid was the dear place of my

nativity, and I had a longing desire to see it again, which I

satisfied as soon as possible; for mine was not a temper to stand

parleying with its own inclinations. On my arrival in town, I

chanced to take up my abode in a ready-furnished lodging, where

dwelt a lady, by name Camilla. Though at some distance from her

teens, she was a very spirit-stirring creature, as Signor Gil

Blas will hear me out in saying; for he fell in with her at

Valladolid nearly about the same time. Her parts were still more

extraordinary than her beauty; and never had a lady with a

character to let a happier talent of inveigling fools to their

ruin. But she was not like those selfish jilts, who put out the

cullibility of their lovers to usury. The pillage of the plodding

merchant, or the grave family man, was squandered upon the first

gambler or prize-fighter who happened to find his way into her

frolicsome fancy.

 

We loved one another from the first moment, and the conformity of

our tempers bound us so closely together, that we soon lived on

the footing of joint property. The amount, in sober sadness, was

little better than a cypher, and a few good dinners more reduced

it to that ignoble negative of number. We were each of us

thinking, as the deuce would have it, of our mutual pleasures,

without profiting in the least by those happy dispositions of

ours for living at the expense of other folks. Want at last gave

a keener edge to our wits, which indulgence had blunted. My dear

Raphael, said Camilla, let us carry the war into the enemy’s

quarters, if you love me; for while we are as faithful as

turtles, we are as foolish; and fall into our own snare, instead

of laying it for the unwary. You may get into the head and heart

of a rich widow; I may conjure myself into the good graces of

some old nobleman: but as for this ridiculous fidelity, it brings

no grist to the mill. Excellent Camilla, answered I, you are

beforehand with me. I was going to make the very same proposal.

It exactly meets my ideas, thou paragon of morality. Yes; the

better to maintain our mutual fire, let us forage for substantial

fuel. As good may always be extracted out of evil, those

infidelities which are the bane of other loves, shall be the

triumph of ours.

 

On the basis of this treaty we took the field. At first, there

was much cry but little wool; for we had no luck at finding

cullies. Camilla met with no thing but pretty fellows, with

vanity in their hearts,