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

“It may be supposed, perhaps, that after this, Don Valerio, baffled, made good his retreat, like a prudent general. Quite the reverse! He became more troublesome than ever. Love is to lovers just what wine is to drunkards. The swain entreated, sighed, looked, and sighed again, when all at once, changing his note from childish treble to the big, manly voice of bluster and ravishment, he swore that he would have by foul means what he could not obtain by fair.

“But the lady, repulsing him courageously, said, with a piercing look of strong resentment, ‘Hold, imprudent wretch! I shall put a curb on your mad career. Learn that you are my own son.’

“Don Valerio was thunderstruck at these words; the tempest of his rage subsided. But, conjecturing that Inésilla had only started this device to rid herself of his solicitations, he answered, ‘That is a mere romance of the moment to steal away from my ardent desires.’

“ ‘No, no,’ said she, interrupting him; ‘I disclose a mystery which should have been forever buried, had you not reduced me to so painful a necessity. It is six-and-twenty years since I was in love with your father, Don Pedro de Luna, then governor of Segovia; you were the fruit of our mutual passion; he owned you, brought you up with care and tenderness, and having no children born in wedlock, he had nothing to hinder him from distinguishing your good qualities by the gifts of fortune. On my part, I have not forsaken you: as soon as you were of an age to be introduced into the world, I drew you into the circle of my acquaintance, to form your manners to that polish of good company, so necessary for a gentleman, which is only to be gained in female society. I have done more: I have employed all my credit to introduce you to the prime minister. In short, I have interested myself for you as I should have done for my own son. After this confession, take your measures accordingly. If you can purge your affections from their dross, and look on me as a mother, you are not banished from my presence, and I shall treat you with my accustomed tenderness. But if you are not equal to an effort which nature and reason demand from you, fly instantly, and release me from the horror of beholding you.’

“Inésilla spoke to this effect. Meanwhile Don Valerio preserved a sullen silence; it might have been interpreted into a virtuous struggle, a conquest over the weakness of his heart. But his purposes were far different; he had another scene to act before his mother. Unable to withstand the total overthrow of all his wild projects, he basely yielded to despair. Drawing his sword, he plunged it in his own bosom. His fate resembled that of Oedipus, with this distinction⁠—that the Theban put out his own eyes from remorse for the crime he had perpetrated, while the Castilian, on the contrary, committed suicide from disappointment at the frustration of his purposes.

“The unhappy Don Valerio was not released from his sufferings immediately. He had leisure left for recollection, and for making his peace with heaven, before he rushed into the presence of his Maker. As his death vacated one of the secretaryships on the Duke of Lerma’s establishment, that minister, not having forgotten my memoir on the subject of the fire, nor the high character he had heard of me, nominated me to succeed to the post in question.”

Gil Blas is introduced to the Duke of Lerma, who admits him among the number of his secretaries, and requires a specimen of his talents, with which he is well satisfied.

Monteser was the person to inform me of this agreeable circumstance, which he did in the following terms: “My friend Gil Blas, though I do not lose you without regret, I am too much your well-wisher not to be delighted at your promotion in the room of Don Valerio. You cannot fail to make a princely fortune, provided you act upon two hints which I have to give you; the first, to affect so total a devotion to his excellency’s good pleasure, as to leave no room to conceive it possible that you have any other object or interest in life; the second, to pay your court assiduously to Señor Don Rodrigo de Calderona, for that personage models and remodels, fashions and touches upon the mind of his master, just as if it was clay under the hands of the designer. If you are fortunate enough to chime in with that favorite secretary, you will travel post to wealth and honor, and find relays upon the road.”

“Sir,” said I to Don Diego, returning him thanks at the same time for his good advice, “be pleased to give some little opening to Don Rodrigo’s character. I have heard a few anecdotes of him. One would suppose him, from some accounts, not to be the best creature in the world; but the people at large are inveterate caricaturists when they draw courtiers at full length; though, after all, the likeness will strike, in spite of the aggravation. Tell me therefore, I beseech you, what is your own sincere opinion of Señor Calderona.”

“That is rather an awkward question,” answered my principal, with an ironical smile. “I should tell anyone but yourself, without flinching, that he was a gentleman of the strictest honor, upon whose fair fame the breath of calumny had never dared to blow; but I really cannot put off such a copy of my countenance upon you. Relying as I do on your discretion, it becomes a duty to deal candidly in the delineation of Don Rodrigo; for without that, it would be playing fast and loose with you to recommend the cultivation of his good will.

“You are to know, then, that when his excellency was no