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

genius as exists in us. Come, gentlemen, let us make a vow never to colleague with any such beggarly fellows; let us swear to that by Styx.”

We laughed heartily at Gaspard’s conceit; the proposal was received with applause, and we took this mock oath with our glasses in our hands.

Thus sat we at table till our masters were pleased to get up from it. This was at midnight; an outrageous instance of sobriety, in the opinion of my colleagues. To be sure, these noble lords left the tavern so early only to visit a celebrated wanton, lodging in the purlieus of the court, and keeping open house night and day for the votaries of pleasure. She was a woman from five and thirty to forty, still in the height of her charms, entertaining in her discourse, and so perfect a mistress in the art of pleasure, that she sold the waste and refuse of her beauty at a higher price than the first sample of the unadulterated article. She had always two or three other pieces of damaged goods in the house, who contributed not a little to the great concourse of nobility resorting thither. The afternoon was spent in play; then supper, and the night passed in drinking and making merry. Our masters stayed till morning, and so did we, without thinking the time long; for, while they were toying with the mistresses, we attacked the maids. At length, we all parted when daylight peeped in on our festivities, and went to bed each of us at our separate homes.

My master getting up at his usual time, about noon, dressed himself. He went out. I followed him, and we paid a visit to Don Antonio Centellés, with whom we found one Don Alvaro de Acuña. He was an old gentleman, who gave lectures on the science of debauchery. The rising generation, if they wanted to qualify themselves for fine gentlemen, put themselves under his tuition. He moulded their ductile habits to pleasure, taught them to make a distinguished figure in the world, and to squander their substance: he had no qualms as to running out his own, for the deed was done. After these three blades had exchanged the compliments of the morning, Centellés said to my master: “In good faith, Don Matthias, you could not have come at a more lucky time. Don Alvaro is come to take me with him to a dinner, given by a citizen to the Marquis de Zenette and Don Juan de Moncade, and you shall be of the party.”

“And what is the citizen’s name?” said Don Matthias.

“Gregorio de Noriega,” said Don Alvaro, “and I will describe the young man in two words. His father, a rich jeweller, is gone abroad to attend the foreign markets, and left his son, at his departure, in the enjoyment of a large income. Gregorio is a blockhead, with a turn for every sort of extravagance, and an awkward hankering after the reputation of wit and fashion, in despite of nature. He has begged of me to give him a few instructions. I manage him completely; and can assure you, gentlemen, that I lead him a rare dance. His estate is rather deeply dipped already.”

“I do not doubt it,” exclaimed Centellés; “I see the vulgar dog in an almshouse. Come, Don Matthias, let us honor the fellow with our acquaintance, and be in at the death of him.”

“Willingly,” answered my master, “for I delight in seeing the fortune of these plebeian upstarts kicked over, when they affect to mix among us. Nothing, for instance, ever entertained me so much as the downfall of the toll-gatherer’s son, whom play, and the vanity of figuring among the great, have stripped, till he has not a house over his head.”

“O! as for that,” replied Don Alvaro, “he deserves no pity; he is as great a coxcomb in his poverty as he was in his prosperity.”

Centellés and my master accompanied Don Alvaro to Gregorio de Noriega’s party. We went there also, that is Mogicon and myself, both in ecstasy at having an opportunity of sponging on a citizen, and pleasing ourselves with the thoughts of being in at the death of him. At our entrance, we observed several men employed in preparing dinner; and there issued from the ragouts they were taking up, a vapor which conciliated the palate through the medium of the nostrils. The Marquis de Zenette and Don Juan de Moncade were just come. The founder of the feast seemed a great simpleton. He aped the man of fashion with a most clumsy grace; a wretched copy of admirable originals, or, more properly, an idiot in the chair of wisdom and taste. Figure to yourself a man of this character in the centre of five bantering fellows, all intent on making a jest of him, and drawing him into ridiculous expenses.

“Gentlemen,” said Don Alvaro, after the first interchange of civilities, “give me leave to introduce you to Señor Gregorio de Noriega, a most brilliant star in the hemisphere of fashion. He owns a thousand amiable qualities. Do you know that he has a highly cultivated understanding? Choose your own subject, he is equally at home in every branch, from the subtlety and closeness of logic, to the elementary science of the criss-cross-row.”

“O! this is really too flattering,” interrupted the scot-and-lot gentleman with a very uncouth laugh. “I might, Señor Alvaro, put you to the blush as you have put me; for you may truly be termed a reservoir as it were, a common sewer of erudition.”

“I had no intention,” replied Don Alvaro, “to draw upon myself so savory an encomium; but truly, gentlemen, Señor Gregorio cannot fail of establishing a name in the world.”

“As for me,” said Don Antonio, “what is so delightful in my eyes, far above the honors of logic or the criss-cross-row, is the tasteful selection of his company. Instead of demeaning himself to the level of tradesmen, he associates only with the young nobility,