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

the young nobleman, rather peevishly; “this brutal importunity is downright murder to one’s feelings. I hate loud music; be so good as to let me be ruined pianissimo. I tell you I want two hundred pistoles, and I must have them.”

“Why then,” said Rodriguez, “we must have recourse to the old rascal who has lent you so much already on usurious terms.”

“Have recourse to the devil, if he will do you any good,” answered Don Matthias; “only let me have two hundred pistoles, and it is the same thing to me how you manage to get them.”

While he was uttering these words in a hasty and fretful tone, the steward went out, and Don Antonio Centellés, a young man of quality, came in. “What is the matter, my friend?” said this last to my master: “your atmosphere is overcast; I trace passion in the lines of your countenance. Who can have ruffled that sweet temper? I would lay a wager, it was that booby just gone out.”

“Yes,” answered Don Matthias, “he is my steward. Every time he comes to speak to me, I am in an agony for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. He rings the changes on the state of my affairs, and tells me that I am spending principal and interest.⁠ ⁠… A beast! He will say next, that I have ruined him into the bargain!”

“My dear fellow,” replied Don Antonio, “I am exactly in the same situation. My man of business is just such another scarecrow as your steward. When the sneaking scoundrel, after repeated demands, brings me some niggardly supply, it is just as if he was lending me his own. He expostulates most barbarously. ‘Sir,’ says he, ‘you are going to rack and ruin; there is an execution out against you.’ I am obliged to cut him short, and beg him to remonstrate in epitome.”

“The worst of it is,” said Don Matthias, “that there is no doing without these fellows; they are the penance attached to our elegant indiscretions.”

“Just so,” replied Centellés.⁠ ⁠… “But listen,” pursued he, bursting into a fit of laughter; “a pleasant idea has just struck me. Nothing was ever more farcically fancied. We may introduce a buffo caricato into our serious opera, and relieve the knell of our departed goods and chattels with a humorous divertisement. The plot is thus: let me try to borrow from your steward whatever you want. You shall do the same with my man of business. Then let them both preach as they please; we shall hearken with the utmost composure. Your steward will come and open his case to me; my man of business will plead the poverty of the land to you. I shall hear of nothing but your extravagance; and you will see your own in mine as in a glass. It will be vastly entertaining.”

A thousand brilliant conceits followed this flight of genius, and put the young patricians into high spirits, so that they kept up the ball with vivacity, if not with wit. Their conversation was interrupted by Gregorio Rodriguez, who brought back with him a little, old man, with a bald head. Don Antonio was for moving off. “Farewell, Don Matthias,” said he, “we shall meet again anon. I leave you with these gentlemen; you have, doubtless, some state affairs to discuss in council.”

“O! no, no,” answered my master, “you had better stop; you will not interrupt us. This warm old gentleman has the moderation to lend me money at twenty percent.”

“What, at twenty percent!” exclaimed Centers, in a tone of astonishment. “In good truth, I wish you joy on being in such hands. I do not come off so cheaply, for my part: I pay through the nose for every farthing I get. My loans are generally raised at double that percent.”

“There is usury,” said the father of the usurious tribe; “unconscionable dogs! Where do they expect to go when they die? I do not wonder there is so strong a prejudice against moneylenders. It is the exorbitant profit which some of them derive from their discounts, that brings reproach and ill-will upon us all. If all my brethren of the blue balls were like me, we should not be treated so scurvily; for my part, I only lend, to do my duty towards my neighbor. Ah! if times were as good now as in my early days, my purse should be at your service as a friend; and even now, in the present distress of the money-market, it goes against the grain to take a poor twenty percent. But one would think the money was all gone back to the mines whence it came: there is no such thing to be had, and the scarcity compels me to depart a little from the disinterested severity of my benevolence. How much do you want?” pursued he, addressing my master.

“Two hundred pistoles,” answered Don Matthias.

“I have four hundred here in a bag,” replied the usurer; “it is only to give you half of them.” At the same time he drew, from underneath his cloak, a blue bag, looking just like that in which farmer Talego had left five hundred pistoles with Rodriguez. I was not long in forming my judgment of the matter, and saw plainly that Meléndez had not bragged, without reason, of the steward’s aptness in the ways of the world. The old man emptied the bag, displayed the cash on a table, and set about counting it. The sight set all my master’s extravagant passions in a flame; the sum total proved very striking to his comprehension.

“Señor Descomulgado,” said he to the usurer, “I have just made a very sensible reflection: I am a great fool. I only borrow enough to redeem my credit, without thinking of my empty pockets. I should be obliged to give you the trouble of coming again tomorrow. I think, therefore, it will be best to spare your age and infirmities, and ease you of the four hundred at