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

comes and takes his glass here sometimes with his friends. Bless us, what a tongue! He will rip up all the minutest actions of his master’s life, and find employment for your secretary till his wrist aches, take my word for it.”

“I like your open dealing,” said Ambrose with a nod of approbation. “To point out a man so capable of speaking to the bad morals of Simon, is an instance of Christian charity as well as of religious zeal. I shall report you very favorably to the inquisition. Make haste, therefore; go and fetch this Gaspard, of whom you speak; but do the thing cautiously, so that his master may have no suspicion of what is going forward.”

The multiplier of scores acquitted himself of his commission with due diligence and laudable privacy. Our little shopman came along with him. The youth had a tongue with a tang, and was just the sort of fellow that we wanted.

“Welcome, my good young man!” said Lamela. “You behold in me an inquisitor, appointed by that venerable body to collect informations against Samuel Simon, on an accusation of still adhering to Judaism in his secret devotions. You are an inmate of his family; consequently you must be an eyewitness to many of his most private transactions. It probably may be unnecessary to warn you, that you are obliged in conscience, and by fear of punishment, to declare all you know about him, notwithstanding any promise to the contrary, when I order you so to do on the part of the holy inquisition.”

“May it please your reverence,” answered the plodding little rascal, “I am quite ready to satisfy your heart’s desire on that head, without being commanded thereto in the name of the holy office. If ever my acquittal was to depend on my master’s character of me, I am persuaded that my chance would be a sorry one; and for that reason, I shall serve him as he would serve me. And I may tell you in the first place, that he is a fly-by-night whose proceedings it is no easy matter to take measure of; a man who puts on all the starch formalities of an inveterate religionist, but at bottom has not a spark of principle in his composition. He goes every evening dangling after a little girl no better than she should be.⁠ ⁠…”

“I am vastly glad indeed to find that,” interrupted Ambrose, “because I plainly perceive, by all you have been telling me, that he is a man of corrupt morals and licentious practices. But answer point by point to the questions I shall put to you. It is above all on the subject of religion that I am commissioned to inquire into his sentiments and conduct. Pray tell me, do you eat much pork at your house?”

“I do not think,” answered Gaspard, “that we have seen it at table twice in the year that I have lived with him.”

“Better and better!” replied the paragon of inquisitors: “write down in legible characters that they never eat pork in Samuel Simon’s family. But as a set-off against that, doubtless a joint of lamb is served up every now and then?”

“Yes, every now and then,” rejoined the apprentice; “we killed one for our own consumption about last Easter.”

“The season is pat and to the purpose,” cried the ecclesiastical commissioner. “Come, write down, that Simon keeps the passover. This goes on merrily to a complete conviction; and it seems we have got a good serviceable information here.”

“Tell me again, my friend,” pursued Lamela, “whether you have not often seen your master fondle young children.”

“A thousand times,” answered Gaspard. “When he sees the little urchins playing about before the shop, if they happen to be pretty, he calls them in and makes much of them.”

“Write that down, be sure you write that down!” interrupted the inquisitor. “Samuel Simon is very grievously suspected of lying in wait for Christian children, and enticing them into his den to circumcise them. Vastly well! vastly well, indeed, Master Simon! you will have an account to settle with the society for the suppression of Judaism, take my word for it. Do not take it into your savage head that such bloody sacrifices are to be perpetrated with impunity. A pretty use you make of baptism and shaving! Cheer up, religious Gaspard, thou foremost of elect apprentices! Make a full confession of all thy master’s sins; complete thine honest testimony by telling us how this simular of a Catholic is more than ever wedded to his Jewish customs and ceremonies. Is it not a fact that one day in the week he sits with his hands before him, and will not even perform the most necessary offices for himself?”

“No,” answered Gaspard, “I have not exactly observed that. What comes nearest to it is, that on some days he shuts himself up in his closet, and stays there a long time.”

“Ay! now we have it,” exclaimed the commissary. “He keeps the Sabbath, or I am not an inquisitor. Note that particularly, officer; note that he observes the fast of the Sabbath most superstitiously! Out upon him! What a shocking fellow! One question more, and his business is done. Is not he always parleying about Jerusalem?”

“Pretty often indeed,” replied our informer. “He knows the Old Testament by heart, and tells us how the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed.”

“The very thing!” resumed Ambrose. “Secretary! be sure you do not neglect that feature of the case. Write, in letters of an inch long, that Samuel Simon has contracted with the devil for the rebuilding of the temple, and that he is plotting day and night for the reestablishment of his nation. That is all I want to know; and it is labor in vain to pursue the examination any further. What Gaspard, in the spirit of truth and charity, has deposed, would be sufficient to make a bonfire of all Jewry.”

When the august mouthpiece of the holy tribunal had sifted the little scoundrelly apprentice