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

that not a single feature of the swaggerer peeped out; not a word escaped him to his own honor and glory; though one could readily have forgiven him for making some little display of the half which was still extant of himself, as a set-off against the dilapidations which had deducted so largely from the usual contexture of a man. Officers who return from their campaigns without a scratch upon their skin, or a love-lock out of place, are not always so humble in their pretensions.

But he told me that what gave him most uneasiness was the having wasted a considerable portion of his private fortune on military objects, so that he had not more than a hundred ducats a year left⁠—a poor establishment for such a pair of whiskers, a gentleman’s lodging, and an amanuensis to multiply memorials by wholesale.

“For, in point of fact, my worthy friend,” added he, shrugging his shoulders, “I present one, with a blessing on my endeavors, every day, and the last meets with the same attention as the first. You would say that it was an even bet between the prime minister and me, which of us two shall be tired first, the memorialist or the receiver of the memorials. I have often had the honor, too, of addressing the king on the same subject; but the rector and his curate say grace in the same key; and in the meantime my castle of Chinchilla is falling to ruin for want of necessary repairs.”

“Faint heart never won fair lady,” said I most wisely to the captain; “you are perhaps on the eve of finding all your marches and countermarches repaid with usury.”

“I must not flatter myself with that pleasing expectation,” answered Don Annibal. “It is but three days since I spoke to one of the minister’s secretaries; and if I am to trust his representations, I have only to hold up my head and look big.”

“What, then, did he say to you?” replied I. “Had those poor dumb mouths, your wounds, no eloquence to wring a hireling pittance for their profuse expense of blood?”

“You shall judge for yourself,” resumed Chinchilla. “This secretary told me in good plain terms, My honest friend, you need not boast so much of your zeal and your fidelity; you have only done your duty in exposing yourself to danger for your country. Naked glory is the true and honorable recompense of gallant actions, and as such is the prize at which a Spaniard aims. You therefore argue on false principles, if you consider the bounty you solicit as a debt. In case it should be granted, you will owe that favor exclusively to the royal goodness, which, in its extreme condescension, requites those of its subjects who have served the state valiantly.”

“Thus you see,” pursued the captain, “that if I had a hundred lives, they are all pledged, and that I am likely to go back as hungry as I came.”

A brave man in distress is the most touching object in this world. I exhorted him to stick close, and offered to write his memorials out fair for nothing. I even went so far as to open my purse to him, and to beg it as a favor that he would draw upon me for whatever he wanted. But he was not one of those folks who never wait to be asked twice on such occasions. So much the reverse, that with a commendable delicacy on the subject, he thanked me for my kindness, but refused it peremptorily. He afterwards told me that, for fear of sponging upon anyone, he had accustomed himself, by little and little, to live with such sobriety, that the smallest quantity of food was sufficient for his subsistence; which was but too true. His daily fare was confined to vegetables, by dint whereof his component parts were confined to skin and bone. That he might have no witnesses how ill he dined, he usually shut himself up in his chamber at that meal. I prevailed so far with him, however, by repeated entreaties, as to obtain that we should dine and sup together; then, undermining his pride by little indirect artifices of compassion, I ordered more provision and wine than I could consume to my own share. I pressed him to eat and drink. At first he made difficulties about it; but in the end there was no resisting my hospitality. After a time, his modesty becoming fainter as his diet was more flush, he helped me off with my dinner and lightened my bottle almost without asking.

One day, after four or five glasses, when his stomach had renewed its intimacy with a more generous system of feeding, he said to me with an air of gayety, “Upon my word, Señor Gil Blas, you have very winning ways with you; you make me do just whatever you please. There is something so hearty in your welcome as to relieve me from all fear of trespassing on your generous temper.”

My captain seemed at that moment so entirely to have got rid of his bashfulness, that if I had been in the humor to have seized the lucky moment, and to have pressed my purse once more on his acceptance, I am much mistaken if he would have refused it. I did not put him to the trial, but rested satisfied with having made him my messmate, and taken the trouble not only to copy out his memorials, but to assist him in their composition. By dint of having written homilies out fair, I had learned the knack of phraseology, and was become a sort of author. The old officer, on his side, had some little vanity about writing well. Both of us thus contending for the prize, the bursts of eloquence would have done honor to the most celebrated professors of Salamanca. But it was in vain that we sat on opposite sides of the table, and drained our genius to the very dregs, to