Gil Blas, Alain-René Lesage [best romance ebooks .txt] 📗

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 ill-breeding 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 upstairs, 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 humor, 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 comer 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 Doña Angela de Peñafiel and Doña Margaretta de Montalván. This pair have not a feature of resemblance to each other. Doña 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 Doña 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 honored lady,” continued he, “she too has a sort of a philosophical looseness. There will be fine chopping of logic there today! 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 showed him no mercy. “This fellow,” said he, “is one of those pompous, unbending spirits, who think to pass for men of profound genius, under favor 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 a 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 reechoed 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. “Señor 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 humor; 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