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

deal of agitation; may your faithful servant ask on what account? Has anything happened out of the common way?’ The young gallant smiled at so home a question, and owned candidly that he had just been engaged in a serious conversation with the Marchioness of Almenara. ‘I will lay a wager,’ said I, laughing outright, ‘that this moppet of threescore and ten, this girl in her second childhood, has been unfolding to you all the secret movements of a tender, susceptible heart.’

“ ‘Do not make a jest of it,’ answered he; ‘for the fact is, my friend, that the marchioness is seriously in love with me. She told me that the narrowness of my circumstances was as well known to her as the nobility of my birth; that she had taken a liking to me, and was determined to place me at my ease by marriage, since she could not decently lay her fortune at my feet on any other terms. That this marriage would expose her to public ridicule, she professed to have considered; that scandal would be busy at her expense; in short, that she should pass for an old fool with an ambitious eye and a lickerish constitution. No matter for that! She was not to be awed from the career of her humor by quips and sentences: her only alarm was, lest I should either make sport of her intentions, or torment her more grievously by my aversion.

“ ‘Such,’ continued the knight, ‘was the substance of the marchioness’s declaration, and I am the more astonished at it because she is the most prudent and sensible woman in Cordova; wherefore I answered by expressing my surprise at her honoring me with the offer of her hand, since she had hitherto persisted in her resolution of remaining in a state of widowhood. To this she replied, that having a considerable fortune, it would give her pleasure to share it in her lifetime with a man of honor to whom she was attached.’

“ ‘To all appearance, then,’ rejoined I, ‘you have made up your mind to take a lover’s leap.’

“ ‘Can you doubt about that?’ answered he. ‘The marchioness is immensely rich, with excellent qualities both of head and heart. It would be the extreme of folly and fastidiousness to let so advantageous a settlement slip through my fingers.’

“I entirely approved my master’s purpose of profiting by so fine an opportunity to make his fortune, and even advised him to bring the matter to a short issue, for fear of a change in the wind. Happily the lady had the business more at heart than myself; her orders were given so effectually, that the necessary forms and ceremonies were soon got over. When it became known in Cordova that the old Marchioness of Almenara was getting herself ready to be the bride of young Don Manriquez de Medrano, the wits began breaking their odd quirks and remnants in derision of the widow; but though she heard her own detractions, she did not put them to mending; the town might talk as they pleased; for when she said she would die a widow, she did not think to live till she were married. The wedding was solemnized with a publicity and splendor which furnished fresh food for evil tongues. ‘The bride,’ said they, ‘might at least have had the modesty to dispense with noise and ostentation, so unbecoming in an old widow who marries a young husband.’

“The marchioness, far enough from yielding to the suggestions of shame at her own inconsistency, or the disparity of their ages, yielded herself up without constraint to the expression of the most lively joy. She gave a grand concert and supper, with a ball afterwards, and invited all the principal families in Cordova. Just before the close of the ball, the new-married couple disappeared, and were shown to an apartment, where, with no other witnesses but her own maid and myself, she spoke to my master in these terms: ‘Don Manriquez, this is your apartment; mine is in another part of the house: we will pass the night in separate rooms, and will live together by day like mother and son.’ At first the knight did not know what to make of this; he thought that the lady was only trying his temper, as if her coldness must be wooed to kindness, and her love, like her pardon, not unsought, be won. Imagining, therefore, that good manners required, at least, the show of passion, he made his advances, and offered, according to the laws of amorous suit enacted in such cases, to assist in the disencumbering duties of her toilet; but, so far from allowing him to interfere with the province of her servant, she pushed him back with a serious air, saying, ‘Hold, Don Manriquez; if you take me for one of those sweet-toothed old women who marry a second time from mere incontinence, you do me a manifest injustice: my proposals were not fraught with conditions of hard service as the tenure of our nuptial contract; the gift of my heart was unmixed with sensual dross, and your gratitude is only drawn upon for returns of pure and platonic friendship.’ After this explanation, she left my master and me in our apartment, and withdrew to her own with her attendant, forbidding the bridegroom, in the most positive manner, to attempt retiring with her.

“After her departure, it was some time before we recovered from our surprise at what we had just heard. ‘Scipio,’ said my master, ‘could you ever have believed that the marchioness would have talked in such a strain? What think you of so philosophic a bride?’

“ ‘I think, sir,’ answered I, ‘that she is a phoenix among the brood of hymen. It is for all the world like a good living without parochial duties.’

“ ‘For my part,’ replied Don Manriquez, ‘there is nothing so much to my taste as a wife of modest pretensions; and I mean to make her amends for the trophy she has