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

“ ‘Good sir,’ replied he, ‘I belong, with your good leave, to the musical department of the catholic church; and it is my common practice to keep my devotion and my wind in play by the rehearsal of an anthem or two as I travel along the road.’

“With this disposition to be sociable, we soon got into conversation. It was clear to me that I had fallen in with a character not to be despised in point of shrewdness, nor indisposed to society and merriment. He was four- or five-and-twenty. My companion being on foot, I slackened my pace, for the pleasure of chatting with him. Among other things, we talked about Toledo.

“ ‘I am perfectly well acquainted with that city,’ said the brazen-lunged torturer of anthems. ‘It was my residence for a considerable time, and my connections there are not altogether contemptible.’

“ ‘And in what part of the town,’ interrupted I, ‘did you reside?’

“ ‘In the New Street,’ was his answer. ‘I was hand in glove with Don Vincent de Buena Garra, Don Matthias de Cordello, and two or three other gentlemen of very considerable fashion. We lived together, took our meals at the same mess, and, in short, were scarcely ever asunder. It was a charming society!’

“This avowal was no small surprise to me, for it is to be understood, that the gentlemen whose names he cited with so pompous an air were the very sharpers with whom I had been affiliated at Toledo. ‘Why, thou degenerate vicar choral!’ exclaimed I, ‘these fine blades of whom thou hast been boasting are among the number of my acquaintance also, for I too have lived with them in the New Street; we were hand in glove, took our meals at the same mess, and, in short, were scarcely ever asunder.’

“ ‘You are a wag!’ replied he, with a knowing wink; ‘that is to say, you got into the gang three years ago, when I left it.’

“ ‘My motive for quitting such a worshipful fraternity,’ resumed I, ‘was an itch for travelling. I mean to make the tour of Spain. A little more knowledge of the world will make me quite another thing.’

“ ‘Doubtless,’ said he, ‘there is no possible way but travelling to rub off the rust, or to bring wit, talent, and address to perfection. It is for the selfsame reason that I too turned my back upon Toledo, though the time glided away there very agreeably. But thanks to a kind providence, which has yoked me with a laborer in my own vineyard, when I least expected it. Let us join our forces, let us travel the same road, let us make a joint-stock of our neighbors’ purses, let us rob, let us cheat, let us avail ourselves of every opportunity that may offer of exemplifying our theory, and improving our practice, in the noble art on which our skill is employed.’

“The proposal was made in so candid a spirit, so like a citizen of the world, untainted with the selfishness of your honest men, that I closed in with it at once. My confidence was surrendered at the first summons to the frankness with which he volunteered his own. We spoke our free hearts each to the other. I dilated all my pilgrimage, and he spake of most disastrous chances, of moving accidents through which he had passed even from his boyish days to this very moment of his ripe and rampant roguery. It appeared that he was on his way from Portalegre, whence he had been obliged to decamp with the utmost expedition on account of a little swindling transaction in which his luck happened not to keep pace with his ingenuity. The habit he wore was sacrilegiously adopted as a cloak to his person and real character, since he thought it safest to be near the church, however far from God. Thus did we two share all our counsel, and pledge our brother’s vows, till we grew together like a double cherry, and determined, with two seeming bodies but one heart, to incorporate our voices and minds in some masterstroke at Mérida. If it took, well and good; if not, we had only to cut and run. From this moment, community of goods, that pure and simple feature of patriarchal life, was enacted as a law between us. Moralez, it is true, for that was my fellow-traveller’s name, did not find himself in the most splendid condition possible. His funds were limited to five or six ducats, with a few little articles in a bag. I therefore was the moneyed man of the firm; but then there was brass in his forehead for an inexhaustible coinage, and the seeming of a saint when he played the devil most. So on we journeyed on the ride and tie principle, and arrived in humble cavalcade at Mérida.

“We put up at an inn near the skirts of the town, where my comrade changed his dress. When he had rigged himself in layman’s attire, we took a turn up and down to reconnoitre the ground, and see if we could pick out some opportunity of laboring in our vocation. Had it been our good fortune to have lived before Homer, that old apologist for sharping by wholesale would have dignified our excursion with a simile.

” Not half so keen, fierce vultures of the chase
Stoop from the mountains on the feathered race, etc.

To descend into plain prose, we were ruminating on the chapter of accidents, and hammering out some theme for the employment of our industry, when we espied a gray-headed old gentleman in the street, sword in hand, defending himself against three men who were thrusting at him with all their might and main. The unfairness of the match was what stuck in my throat; so that flying, with the spirit of a prizefighter, to see fair play, I made common cause with the old man. Moralez followed up my