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

The habit of constant intercourse sheds a languor over their meetings. They part without pain, and come together without emotion. One would take them for man and wife. In a word, my mistress has no marks of violent love for Don Austin. Besides, in point of person, there is such a difference between you and him as cannot fail to catch the eye of a nice observer like Doña Helena. Therefore do not be cast down. Continue your particular attentions. You shall have a second in me. I shall let no opportunity escape of pointing out to my mistress the merit of all your exertions to please her. In vain shall she intrench herself behind reserve. In spite of guard and garrison, I will ransack the muster-roll of her sentiments.’

“Now were my open attacks and secret ambuscades more fiercely pointed against the daughter of Don George. Among the rest, I entertained her with a serenade. After the concert, Felicia, to sound her mistress, begged to know how she had been entertained.

“ ‘The singer had a good voice,’ said Doña Helena.

“ ‘But how did you like the words?’ replied the abigail.

“ ‘I scarcely noted them,’ returned the lady; ‘the music engrossed my whole attention. The poetry excited as little curiosity as its author.’

“ ‘If that is the case,’ exclaimed the chambermaid, ‘poor Don Gastón de Cogollos is reckoning without his host; and a miserable spendthrift of his glances, to be always ogling at our latticework.’

“ ‘Perhaps it may not be he,’ said the mistress, with petrifying indifference, ‘but some other spark, announcing his passion by this concert.’

“ ‘Excuse me,’ answered Felicia, ‘it is Don Gastón himself, who accosted me this morning in the street, and implored me to assure you how he adored, in defiance of your rigorous repulses; but that he should esteem himself the most blest of mortals if you would allow him to soothe his desponding thoughts by all the most delicate and impassioned attentions. Judge now if I can be mistaken, after so open an avowal.’

“Don George’s daughter changed countenance at once, and said to her servant, with a severe frown. ‘You might well have dispensed with the relation of this impertinent discourse. Bring me no more such idle tales; and tell this young madman, when next he accosts you, to play off his shallow artifices on some more accommodating fool; but, at all events, let him choose a more gentlemanly recreation than that of lounging all day at his window, and prying into the privacy of my apartment.’

“This message was faithfully delivered at my next interview with Felicia, who assured me that her mistress’s modes of speech were not to be taken in their literal construction, but that my affairs were in the best possible train. For my part, being little read in the science of coquetry, and finding no favorable sense on the face of the author’s original words, I was half out of humor with the wire-drawn comments of the critic. She laughed at my misgiving, and asked her friend for pen, ink, and paper, saying, ‘Sir knight of the doleful countenance, write immediately to Doña Helena as dolefully as you look. Make echo ring with your sufferings; outsigh the river’s murmur; and, above all, let rocks and woods resound with the prohibition of appearing at your window. Then pawn your existence on obeying her, though without the possibility ever to redeem the pledge. Turn all that nonsense into pretty sentences, as you gay deceivers so well know how to do, and leave the rest to me. The event, I flatter myself, will redound more than you are aware to the honor of my penetration.’

“He must have been a strange lover who would not have profited by so opportune an occasion of writing to his mistress. My letter was couched in the most pathetic terms. Felicia smiled at its contents, and said that if the women knew the art of infatuating men, the men, in return, had borrowed their influence over women from the arch wheedler himself. My privy counsellor took the note, and went back to Don George’s, with a special injunction that my windows should be fast shut for some days.

“ ‘Madam,’ said she, ‘going up to Doña Helena, I met Don Gastón. He must needs endeavor to come round me with his flattering speeches. In tremulous accents, like a culprit pleading against his sentence, he begged to know whether I had spoken to you on his behalf. Then, in prompt and faithful compliance with your orders, I snapped up the words out of his mouth. To be sure, my tongue did run at a fine rate against him. I called him all manner of names, and left him in the street like a stock, staring at my termagant loquacity.’

“ ‘I am delighted,’ answered Doña Helena, ‘that you have disengaged me from that troublesome person. But there was no occasion to have snubbed him so unmercifully. A creature of your degree should always keep a good tongue in its mouth.’

“ ‘Madam,’ replied the domestic, ‘one cannot get rid of a determined lover by mincing one’s words, though it comes to much the same thing when one flies into a passion. Don Gastón, for instance, was not to be bullied out of his senses. After having given it him on both sides of his ears, as I told you, I went on that errand of yours to the house of your relation. The lady, as ill luck would have it, kept me longer than she ought. I say longer than she ought, because my plague and torment met me on my return. Who the deuce would have thought of seeing him? It put me all in a twitter; but then my tongue, which at other times is apt to be in a twitter, stuck motionless in my mouth. While my tongue stuck motionless in my mouth, what did he do? He slid a paper into my hand without giving me time to consider whether I should take it or no, and made