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

Antequera. My heart palpitated, without my knowing why; and my emotion, too strong to pass unnoticed, excited a visible sympathy in him. I avowed myself his townsman, and asked his family name.

“ ‘Alas!’ answered he, ‘your curiosity makes my sorrow flow afresh. Eighteen years ago did I leave my home, where my remembrance is coupled with scenes of blood and horror. You must yourself have heard but too much of my story. My name is Don Anastasio de Rada.’

“Merciful heaven I exclaimed I; ‘may I believe my senses? And can this be? Don Anastasio? Father!’

“ ‘What is it you say, young man?’ exclaimed he, in his turn, with surprise and agitation equal to my own. ‘Are you that ill-fated infant, still in its mother’s womb, when I sacrificed her to my fury?’

“ ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘none other did the virtuous Estephania bring into the world, after the fatal night when you left her weltering in her own blood.’

“Don Anastasio stifled my words in his embraces. For a quarter of an hour we could only mingle our inarticulate sighs and exclamations. After exhausting our tender recollections, and indulging in the wild expression of our feelings, my father lifted his eyes to heaven, in gratitude for Estephania saved; but the next moment, as if doubtful of his bliss, he demanded by what evidence his wife’s innocence had been cleared.

“ ‘Sir,’ answered I, ‘none but yourself ever doubted it. Her conduct has been uniformly spotless. You must be undeceived. Know that Don Huberto was a traitor. In proof of this I unfolded all his perfidy, the vengeance I had taken, and his own confession before he expired.’

“My father was less delighted at his liberty restored than at these happy tidings. In the forgetfulness of ecstasy, he repeated all his former transports. His approbation of me was ardent and entire.

“ ‘Come, my son,’ said he, ‘let us set out for Antequera. I burn with impatience to throw myself at the feet of a wife whom I have treated so unworthily. Since you have brought me acquainted with my own injustice, my heart has been torn by remorse.’

“I was too eager to bring together a couple so near and dear to me, not to expedite our journey as much as possible. I quitted the privateer, and with my share of prize money bought two mules at Adra, my father not choosing again to incur the hazard of a voyage. He found leisure on the road to relate his adventures, which I inclined to hear as seriously as did the Prince of Ithaca the various recitals of the king his father. At length, after several days, we halted at the foot of a mountain near Antequera. Wishing to reach home privately, we went not into the town till midnight.

“You may guess my mother’s astonishment at beholding a husband whom she had thought forever lost; and the almost miraculous circumstances of his restoration were a second source of wonder. He entreated forgiveness for his barbarity with marks of repentance so lively, that she could not but be moved. Instead of looking on him as a murderer, she only saw the man to whose will high heaven had subjected her; such religion is there in the name of husband to a virtuous wife! Estephania had been so alarmed about me, that my return filled her with rapture. But her joy on this account was not without alleviation. A sister of Hordales had instituted a criminal prosecution against her brother’s antagonist. The search for me was hot, so that my mother, considering home as insecure, was painfully anxious about me. It was therefore necessary to set out that very night for court, whither I come to solicit my pardon, and hope to obtain it by your generous intercession with the prime minister.”

The gallant son of Don Anastasio thus closed his narrative; after which I observed, with a self-sufficient physiognomy, “It is well, Señor Don Roger; the offence seems to me to be venial. I will undertake to lay the case before his excellency, and may venture to promise you his protection.”

The thanks my client lavished would have passed in at one ear and out at the other, if they had not been backed by assurances of more substantial gratitude. But when once that string was touched, every nerve and fibre of my frame vibrated in unison. On the very same day did I relate the whole story to the duke, who allowed me to present the gentleman, and addressed him thus:

“Don Roger, I have been informed of the duel which has brought you to court; Santillane has laid all the particulars before me. Make yourself perfectly easy; you have done nothing but what the circumstances of the case might almost warrant; and it is especially on the ground of wounded honor that his Majesty is best pleased to extend his grace and favor. You must be committed for mere form’s sake; but you may depend on it, your confinement shall be of short duration. In Santillane you have a zealous friend, who will watch over your interests and hasten your release.”

Don Roger paid his respectful acknowledgments to the minister, on whose pledge he went and surrendered himself. His pardon was soon made out, owing to my activity. In less than ten days, I sent this modern Telemachus home, to say, “How do you do?” to his Ulysses and Penelope; had he stood upon the merits of his case without a protector, he might have whined out a year’s imprisonment, and scarcely have got off at last. My commission was but a poor hundred pistoles. It was no very magnificent haul; but I was not as yet a Calderona, to turn up my nose at the small fry.

IX

Gil Blas makes a large fortune in a short time, and behaves like other wealthy upstarts.

This affair gave me a relish for my trade; and ten pistoles to Scipio, by way of brokerage, whetted his eagerness to start more game of the same