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

>in so pressing an emergency? There was nothing left to pay my

travelling expenses back into the Asturias. And then what should

I have done there? I should have got nothing from my family but a

long string of condolences, which would have furnished me neither

with food nor with raiment. On the other hand, I had been too

well brought up to fall into those courses, into which too many

poor young women are betrayed for the sake of a scandalous

subsistence. There was but one thing remaining for me to

determine on. I turned actress to preserve my morals.

 

So tingling a sense of ridicule came over me, when Laura wound up

her romance with this pious motive for turning actress, that I

could scarcely refrain from relieving myself by a fit of

laughter. But gravity was of too much consequence to be dispensed

with; and I said to her with an air the counterpart of her own —

My dear sister, I entirely approve of your conduct, and am

heartily glad to meet with you at Grenada, and moreover settled

on so respectable a footing.

 

The Marquis de Marialva, who had not lost a word of all these

fine speeches, swallowed down blindfold whatever Don Antonio’s

widow thought fit to drench his credulity with. He took part in

the conversation too, and asked me whether I had any fixed

employment in Grenada or elsewhere, I paused for a moment to

consider whether and after what manner I should lie; but as there

seemed no need in this case to draw on my invention, I told the

truth by way of variety. In a plain matter of fact manner did I

rehearse my introduction to the archbishop’s palace, and my

discharge therefrom, to the infinite amusement of his Portuguese

lordship. To be sure, in telling the truth, I did not keep my

word, for I could not help launching out a little at the

archbishop’s expense, in spite of my solemn promise given to

Melchior. But the best of the joke was, that Laura, taking my

story for a fiction invented after her example, burst out into

peals of laughter: whereas the whimsicality of the circumstance

would have raised a soberer mirth, had she known it to have been

alloyed with the base ingredient of veracity.

 

After having come to the end of my tale, which closed with just

mentioning the lodging I had taken, dinner was announced. I

instantly motioned to with draw, as if intending to take that

frugal meal at home; but Laura would not hear of it. Do you mean

to affront me, brother! said she. You must dine here. Indeed, I

cannot think of your staying any longer at a paltry inn. You must

positively board and lodge in my house. Send your trunks hither

this very evening; there is a spare bed for you.

 

His Portuguese lordship, possibly not altogether relishing this

excess of hospitality even to a brother, then interfered between

us, and said to Laura — No, Estella, you have not sufficient

accommodation to give him a bed without inconvenience. Your

brother seems to be a clever young fellow; and the circumstance

of his being so nearly related to you, gives him a strong claim

on my kindness. He shall be put at once upon my establishment. I

am in want of a secretary, and shall delight in giving him the

appointment: he shall be my right-hand man. Let him be sure to

come and sleep at my house this very night; I will order a room

to be got ready for him. I will fix his regular salary at four

hundred ducats; and if on better acquaintance I have reason as I

trust I shall, to be satisfied with him, I will place him in a

situation to laugh at the consequences of having been a little

too plain-spoken with his patron the archbishop.

 

My acknowledgments to the marquis for this high honour were

followed by those of Laura, who far exceeded me in powers of

panegyric. Let us drop the subject, interrupted he; it is a

settled point Settled as it was, he confirmed the contract on the

lips of his green-room Dulcinea, and went his way. She

immediately pulled me by the arm into a closet, where, secure

from interruption, she cried out, Cut my laces! I shall burst if

I do not give way at once to the fit of laughter that is coming

over me. And so she probably would; for she threw herself into an

arm-chair, and holding both her sides, shouted out her convulsive

peal of mirth like a mad woman. It was impossible for me to

refrain from following her example. When we had exhausted our

risible propensities, Own, Gil Blas, said she, that we have just

been acting a very humorous farce. But I did not look for the

concluding scene. My only thought was to secure you board and

lodging under my own roof; and there was no other possibility of

making the proposition in a modest way but by passing you off for

my brother. But I am heartily glad that the chapter of accidents

has opened with so good a berth for you. The Marquis de Marialva

is a noble man of liberal and honourable sentiments, who will be

better than his word in what he does for you. But confess now!

There is scarcely a woman in existence except myself would have

given so coming-on a reception to a fellow who shirks his friends

without saying with your leave or by your leave. I however am one

of those simple-hearted girls, who are glad to receive back again

the base man they have once loved, though he should have offended

and repented seven, or even seven thousand times.

 

The best way for me was to acknowledge the extreme illbreeding

of which I had been guilty, to blush and beg pardon once for all.

After this explanation, she led the way to a very handsome

dining-room. We placed ourselves at table, where having a

chambermaid and a footboy for eye-witnesses, we kept within the

bounds of brother and sister. When we had done dinner, we went

back again into the same closet where we had been conversing

before. Having our time to ourselves, my paragon of a Laura,

giving herself up to her natural love of merriment, and to her no

less natural curiosity, required from me a faithful and true

narrative of all my pros and cons, my ins and outs, since that

unmannerly separation of ours. I gave her a full and particular

account: nothing extenuating on my own behalf, nor setting down

aught in malice on the other side. When I had quenched her thirst

after a story, she slaked mine, by communicating the particulars

of her eventful life to the following effect.

 

CH. VII. — Laura’s Story.

 

I SHALL just run over to you, as briefly as possible, the

circumstances which led me to embrace the theatrical profession.

 

After you took French leave, so much to your credit, great events

happened. My mistress Arsenia, more surfeited with a glut of

pleasures than scandalized at their immorality, renounced the

stage, and took me with her to a fine estate which she had just

purchased in the neighbourhood of Zenora with the wages of her

sinful life. We soon got acquainted in the town. Our visits there

were very frequent; and sometimes for a day or two together. With

the exception of these little excursions, we were as closely

domesticated as probationers in a nunnery, and almost as piously

employed.

 

On one of our high days and holidays, Don Felix Moldonado, the

corregidor’s only son, saw me by chance, and took a liking to me.

He soon found an opportunity of speaking with me in private; and,

as it is in vain to affect modesty before one who knows me so

well, there was some little contrivance of my own to bring the

interview about. The young gentleman was not twenty years of age;

the very picture of Venus’s sweetheart, or Venus’s sweetheart the

very picture of him; with a form for a sculptor to work from;

with an address so elegant, and with sentiments so generous, as

to throw even his personal graces into the background. There was

such a winning way with him, so pressing an earnestness to

prevail, when he took a large diamond from his own finger, and

slid it upon mine, that it would have been quite brutal not to

have let it stay there. It was really something like sentiment

that I began to entertain towards a swain of so interesting a

character. But what an absurd thing it is for wenches of a

certain sort to hook themselves upon young men of family, when

their surly fathers hold official situations! The corregidor, who

had scarcely his equal in the whole tribe of corregidors, got

wind of our correspondence, and determined to close it in a

summary manner. He sent a host of alguazils to take me into

custody, who dragged me away, in spite of my cries and tears, to

the house of correction for female penitents.

 

There, without bill of indictment or form of trial, the lady

abbess ordered me to be stripped of my ring and my clothes, and

to be dressed in the habit of the institution; a long gown of

grey serge tied about the middle with a strap of black leather,

whence depended a rosary with large beads swinging down to my

heels. After this pleasant reception, they took me into a hall,

where there was an old monk, the deuce knows of what order, who

set to work preaching up repentance and resignation, pretty much

in the same strain as Dame Leonarda, when she exhorted you to

patience in the subterraneous cavern. He told me that I was

excessively obliged indeed to those good people who had so kindly

shut me up, and could never thank them sufficiently for their

good deed, in rescuing me from the harpy talons of the world, the

flesh, and the devil. But I must frankly own that all my other

sins were pressed down and heaped high with ingratitude: far from

overflowing with the milk of human kindness towards those who had

conferred such a favour upon me, I abused them in terms that

would have put any dictionary to the blush.

 

Eight days thus passed in this wilderness of desolation; but on

the ninth, for I had notched the hours and even the minutes on a

stick, my fate seemed be ginning to take another turn. Crossing a

little court, I met the house steward, a personage whose will was

absolute; yes, the lady abbess herself was obedient to his will.

He rendered an account of his stewardship to none but the

corregidor, on whom alone he was dependent, and whose confidence

in him was unbounded. His name was Pedro Zendono, and the town of

Salsedon in Biscay laid claim to the honour of his birth. Figure

to yourself a tall man, with the complexion of a mummy and the

bare anatomy of a dealer in mortification; he might have sat for

the penitent thief in a picture of the crucifixion. He scarcely

ever cast a carnal glance towards us Magdalens. You never saw

such a face of rank hypocrisy in all your life, though you have

spent some part of it under the same roof with the archbishop,

and are not unacquainted with the clergy of his diocese.

 

But to return from this digression; … . I met this Signor

Zendono, who said to me slily as he passed — Take comfort, my

girl, I am sensibly affected with your wretched case. He said no

more, and went on his way, leaving me to make my own comments on

so concise and