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

to receive all their fraternal embraces. Relations and strangers, all were for having a pull at him. At length his father said, “You are welcome, Diego. You find your kinsmen living upon the fat of the land, my friend. I shall say no more at present: a nod is as good as a wink.” Meanwhile the company went forward upon the plain, took their stations under the tents, and sat down to table. I kept close to my companion, and we both dined with the happy couple, who appeared to be suitably matched. The meal was not soon over, for the schoolmaster had the vanity to give three courses, for the purpose of cutting out his brothers, who had not been so magnificent in their hospitalities.

After the banquet, all the guests expressed their longings to see Señor Thomas’s play, not doubting but the performance of so extraordinary a genius would deserve all their ears. We came in front of the stage; the musicians had taken possession of the orchestra, for the overture and act-tunes. While everyone was waiting in profound silence for the rising of the curtain, the actors appeared on the boards; and the author, with the piece in his hand, sat down at the wing, in the prompter’s place. Well might he call it a tragedy; for, in the first act, the King of Morocco, by way of diversion, shot an hundred Moorish slaves with arrows; in the second, he beheaded thirty Portuguese officers, taken prisoners by one of his captains; and, in the third and last, this monarch, surfeited with long-indulged libertinism, set fire with his own hands to the seraglio where his wives were confined, and reduced it to ashes with its inhabitants. The Moorish slaves, as well as the Portuguese officers, were puppets on a very curious construction; and the palace, built of pasteboard, looked very naturally in flames by means of an artificial firework. This conflagration, accompanied by a thousand piercing cries, issuing from the ruins, concluded the piece, and the curtain dropped upon this amiable entertainment. The whole plain resounded with the applause of this fine tragedy; which spoke for the good taste of the poet, and proved that he knew where to look out for a subject.

I did not suppose there was anything more to be seen after The Amusements of Muley Bugentuf; but I was mistaken. Kettledrums and trumpets announced a new exhibition⁠—the distribution of prizes⁠—for Thomas de la Fuenta, to give additional solemnity to his Olympics, had made all his boys, as well day-scholars as boarders, write exercises; and on this occasion he was to give to those who had succeeded best, books bought at Segovia out of his own pocket. All at once were brought upon the stage two long forms out of the school, with a press, full of old, worm-eaten books, in fine, new bindings. At this signal, all the actors returned upon the stage, and took their places round Señor Thomas, who looked as big as the head of a college. He had a sheet of paper in his hand, with the names of the successful candidates. This he gave to the King of Morocco, who began calling over the list with an authoritative voice. Each scholar, answering to his name, went humbly to receive a book from the hands of the bum-jerker; after this, he was crowned with laurel, and seated on one of the two benches, to be exposed to the gaze of the admiring company. Yet, desirous as the schoolmaster might be to send the spectators away in good humor, he brought his eggs to a bad market; for, having distributed almost all the prizes to the boarders, according to the usual etiquette of pedagogues, that those who pay most must necessarily be the cleverest fellows, the mammas of certain day-scholars caught fire at this instance of partiality, and fell foul of the disciplinarian thereupon: so that the festival, hitherto so much to the glory of the donor, seemed likely to have ended to the same tune as the carousal of the Lapithae.

Book III I

The arrival of Gil Blas at Madrid⁠—His first place there.

I made some stay with the young barber. At my departure, I met with a traveller of Segovia passing through Olmédo. He was returning with four mules from a trading expedition to Valladolid, and took me by way of back carriage. We got acquainted on the road, and he took such a fancy to me that nothing would serve him but I must be his guest at Segovia. He gave me free quarters for two days, and, when he found me determined to leave him for Madrid under convoy of a muleteer, he troubled me with a letter, begging me to deliver it in person according to the superscription, without hinting that it was a letter of recommendation. I was punctual in calling on Señor Matheo Meléndez. He was a woollen-draper, living at the gate of the Sun, at the corner of Trunkmaker street. No sooner had he broken the cover and read the contents, than he said, with an air of complacency, “Señor Gil Blas, my correspondent, Pedro Palacio, has written to me so pressingly in your favor, that I cannot do otherwise than offer you a bed at my house; moreover, he desires me to find you a good master, and I undertake the commission with pleasure. I have no doubt of suiting you to a hair.”

I embraced the offer of Meléndez the more gratefully because my funds were getting much below par; but I was not long a burden on his hospitality. At the week’s end, he told me that he had mentioned my name to a gentleman of his acquaintance, who wanted a valet-de-chambre, and, according to present appearances, the place would not be long vacant. In fact, this gentleman happened to make his appearance in the very nick.

“Sir,” said Meléndez, pushing me forward, “you