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

attendant above all, my amiable Laura, was very conspicuous; but her wit was so extremely nimble, that her virtue could never overtake it. Our masters and the actresses on the floor above, raised incessant peals of laughter, which reached us in the regions below; and probably the entertainment was much alike with the celestials and the infernals. If all the knowing remarks had been written down, which escaped from the philosophers that night assembled at Arsenia’s, I really think it would have been a manual for the rising generation. Yet we could not arrest the chaste moon in her progress; the rising of that blab, the sun, parted us. Clarín followed the heels of Don Alexo, and I went home with Don Matthias. VI

The prince’s company of comedians.

My master getting up the next day, received a note from Don Alexo Segiar, desiring his company immediately. We went, and found there the Marquis de Zenette, and another young nobleman of prepossessing manners, whom I had never seen.

“Don Matthias,” said Segiar to my protector, introducing the stranger, “give me leave to present Don Pompeyo de Castro, a relation of mine. He has been at the court of Portugal almost from his childhood. He reached Madrid last night, and returns to Lisbon tomorrow. He can allow me only one day. I wish to make the most of the precious moments, and thought of asking you and the Marquis de Zenette to make out the time agreeably.”

Thereupon, my master and Don Alexo’s relation embraced heartily, and complimented one another in the most extravagant manner. I was much pleased with Don Pompeyo’s conversation, it showed both acuteness and solidity.

They dined with Segiar; and the gentlemen, after the dessert, amused themselves at play till the theatre opened. Then they went all together to the Prince’s House, to see a new tragedy, called The Queen of Carthage. At the end of the piece they returned to supper, and their conversation ran first on the composition, then upon the actors.

“As for the work,” cried Don Matthias, “I think very lightly of it. Aeneas is a more pious blockhead there than in the Aeneid. But it must be owned that the piece was played divinely. What does Señor Don Pompeyo think of it? He does not seem to agree with me.”

“Gentlemen,” said the illustrious stranger with a smile, “you are so enraptured with your actors, and still more with your actresses, that I scarcely dare avow my dissent.”

“That is very prudent,” interrupted Don Alexo with a sneer; “your criticisms would be ill received. You should be tender of our actresses before the trumpeters of their fame. We carouse with them every day, we warrant them sound in their conceptions: we would give vouchers for the justness of their expression if it were necessary.”

“No doubt of it,” answered his kinsman, “you would do the same kind office by their lives and their manners, from the same motives of companionable feeling.”

“Your ladies of the sock and buskin at Lisbon,” said the Marquis de Zenette, “are doubtless far superior?”

“They certainly are,” replied Don Pompeyo. “They are some of them at least perfect in their cast.”

“And these,” resumed the Marquis, “would be warranted by you in their conceptions and expressions?”

“I have no personal acquaintance with them,” rejoined Don Pompeyo. “I am not of their revels, and can judge of their merit without partiality. Do you, in good earnest, think your company first-rate?”

“No, really,” said the Marquis, “I think no such thing, and only plead the cause of a few individuals. I give up all the rest. Will you not allow extraordinary powers to the actress who played Dido? Did she not personate that queen with the dignity, and at the same time with all the bewitching charms, calculated to realize our idea of the character? Could you help admiring the skill with which she seizes on the passions of the spectator, and harmonizes their tone to the vibrations she purposes to produce? She may be called perfect in the exquisite art of declaiming.”

“I agree with you,” said Don Pompeyo, “that she can touch the string either of terror or of pity: never did any actress come closer to the heart, and the performance is altogether fine; but still she is not without her defects. Two or three things disgusted me in her playing. Would she denote surprise? she glances her eyes to and fro in a most extravagant manner, altogether unbecoming her supposed majesty as a princess. Add to this, that in swelling her voice, which is of itself sound and mellifluous, she goes out of her natural key, and assumes a harsh, ranting tone. Besides, it should seem as if she might be suspected, in more than one passage, of not very clearly comprehending her author. Yet I would in candor rather suppose her wanting in diligence than capacity.”

“As far as I see,” said Don Matthias to the critic, “you will never write complimentary odes to our actresses!”

“Pardon me,” answered Don Pompeyo. “I can discover high talent through all their imperfections. I must say that I was enchanted with the chambermaid in the interlude. What fine natural parts! With what grace she treads the stage! Has she anything pointed to deliver? she heightens it by an arch smile, with a keen glance and sarcastic emphasis, which convey more to the understanding than the words to the ear. It might be objected that she sometimes gives too much scope to her animal spirits, and exceeds the limits of allowable freedom, but that would be hypercritical. There is one bad habit I should strongly advise her to correct. Sometimes in the very crisis of the action, and in an affecting passage, she bursts in all at once upon the interest with some misplaced jest, to curry favor with the mob of barren spectators. The pit, you will say, is caught by her artifice; that may be well for her popularity, but not for their taste.”

“And what do you