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

of mingled respect and affection, “whence is it that you are no longer so cheerful as heretofore? Has your philosophy lost ground? or has the world recovered its allurements? Surely you would not plunge again into that gulf where your virtue must inevitably be shipwrecked!”

“No, heaven be praised!” replied the minister: “my part at court has long faded from my memory, and its trappings from my eyes.”

“Indeed! why, then,” resumed I, “since you have strength enough to banish false regrets, are you so weak as to indulge a melancholy which alarms us all?

“What is the matter with you, my dear master?” continued I, falling at his knees: “some secret sorrow preys upon you: can you hide it from Santillane, whose zeal, discretion, and fidelity you have so often experienced? Why am I so unhappy as to have lost your confidence?”

“You still possess it,” said his lordship: “but I must own, it is reluctantly that I shall reveal the subject of my distress; yet the importunities of such a friend are irresistible. To no one else could I impart so singular a confidence. Yes, I am the prey of a morbid melancholy which eats inwardly into my vitals: a spectre haunts me every moment, arrayed in the most terrific form of preternatural horror. In vain have I argued with myself that it is a vision of the brain, an unreal mockery: its continual presentments blast my sight, and unseat my reason. Though my understanding teaches me, that in looking on this spectre I stare at vacancy, my spirits are too weak to derive comfort from the conviction. Thus much have you extorted from me; now judge whether the cause of my melancholy is fit to be divulged.”

With equal grief and astonishment did I listen to the strange confession, which implied a total derangement of the nervous system. “This, my lord,” said I, “must proceed from injudicious abstinence.”

“So I thought at first,” answered he; “and to try the experiment, I have been eating more than usual for some days past; but it is all to no purpose; the phantom takes his stand as usual.”

“It will vanish,” said I, “if your excellency will only divert your mind by your accustomed relaxations with your household. Company and gentle occupation are the best remedies for these affections of the spirits.”

In a short time after this conversation, his lordship became seriously indisposed, and sent for two notaries from Madrid, to make his will. Three capital physicians followed in their track, who had the reputation of curing their patients now and then. As soon as it was noised about the castle that these last undertakers were arrived, the case was given up for lost; weeping and gnashing of teeth took place universally, and the family mourning was ordered. They brought with them their usual understrappers, an apothecary and a surgeon.7 The notaries were suffered to earn their fee first, after which, death’s notaries prepared to take a bond of the patient. They practised in the school of Sangrado, and from their very first consultation, ordered bleeding so frequently and freely, that in six days they brought his lordship to the point of death, and on the seventh delivered him from the terror of his sprite.

After the minister’s decease, a lively and sincere sorrow reigned in the castle of Loeches. The whole household wept bitterly. Far from deriving consolation from the certainty of being remembered in his will, there was not a dependant who would not willingly have saved his life by the sacrifice of the legacy. As for me, whom he most delighted in, attached to him as I was from disinterested friendship, my grief was more acute than that of the rest. I question whether Antonia cost me more tears.

XII

The proceedings at the castle of Loeches after his lordship’s death, and the course which Santillane adopted.

The minister, according to his last injunctions, was buried without pomp and without procession in the convent, with a dirge of our lamentations. After the funeral, Madame d’Olivarez called us together to hear the will read, with which the household had good reason to be satisfied. Everyone had a legacy proportioned to his claim, and none less than two thousand crowns: mine was the largest, amounting to ten thousand pistoles, as a mark of his singular regard. The hospitals were not forgotten, and provision was made for an annual commemoration in several convents.

Madame d’Olivarez sent all the household to Madrid to receive their legacies from Don Raymond Caporis, who had orders to pay them; but I could not be of the party, in consequence of a violent fever from distress of mind, which confined me to the castle for more than a week. During that time, the reverend Dominican paid me all possible attention. He had conceived a friendship for me, which was not confined to my worldly interests, and was anxious to know how I meant to dispose of myself on my recovery. I answered that I had not yet made up my mind upon the subject: there were moments when my feelings strongly prompted towards a religious vow.

“Precious moments!” exclaimed the Dominican, “you will do well to profit by them. I advise you as a friend to retire to our convent at Madrid, for example; there to become a pious benefactor by the free gift of your whole fortune, and to die in the livery of St. Dominic. Many very questionable Christians have made amends for a life of sin by so holy an end.”

In the actual disposition of my mind, this advice was not unpalatable; and I promised to reflect upon it. But on consulting Scipio, who came to see me immediately after the monk, he treated the very notion as the phantom of a distempered brain.

“For shame!” said he; “does not your estate at Lirias offer a more eligible seclusion? If you were delighted with it formerly, the charm will be increased tenfold, now that the lapse of years has