The Measures Gil Blas took after the Adventure of the ready-furnished
Lodging.
BOOK THE SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
Fabricio introduces Gil Blas to the Licentiate Sedillo, and procures
him a Reception. The Domestic Economy of that Clergyman. Picture of
his Housekeeper.
CHAPTER II.
The Canon's Illness; his Treatment; the Consequence; the Legacy to
Gil Blas.
CHAPTER III.
Gil Blas enters into Doctor Sangrado's Service, and becomes a famous
Practitioner.
CHAPTER IV.
Gil Blas goes on practising Physic with equal Success and Ability.
Adventure of the recovered Ring.
CHAPTER V.
Sequel of the foregoing Adventure. Gil Blas retires from Practice,
and from the Neighborhood of Valladolid.
CHAPTER VI.
His Route from Valladolid, with a Description of his Fellow-traveller.
CHAPTER VII.
The Journeyman Barber's Story.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Meeting of Gil Blas and his Companion with a Man soaking Crusts
of Bread at a Spring, and the Particulars of their Conversation.
CHAPTER IX.
The Meeting of Diego with his Family; their Circumstances in Life;
great Rejoicing on the Occasion; the parting Scene between him and
Gil Blas.
BOOK THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
The Arrival of Gil Blas at Madrid. His first Place there.
CHAPTER II.
The Astonishment of Gil Blas at meeting Captain Rolando in Madrid,
and that Robber's curious Narrative.
CHAPTER III.
Gil Blas is dismissed by Don Bernard de Castil Blazo, and enters into
the Service of a Beau.
CHAPTER IV.
Gil Blas gets into Company with his Fellows; they show him a ready
Road to the Reputation of Wit, and impose on him a singular Oath.
CHAPTER V.
Gil Blas becomes the Darling of the Fair Sex, and makes an
interesting Acquaintance.
CHAPTER VI.
The Prince's Company of Comedians.
CHAPTER VII.
History of Don Pompeyo de Castro.
CHAPTER VIII.
An Accident, in Consequence of which Gil Blas was obliged to look out
for another Place.
CHAPTER IX.
A new Service after the Death of Don Matthias de Silva.
CHAPTER X.
Much such another as the Foregoing.
CHAPTER XI.
A theatrical Life, and an Author's Life.
CHAPTER XII.
Gil Blas acquires a Relish for the Theatre, and takes a full Swing of
its Pleasures, but soon becomes disgusted.
BOOK THE FOURTH.
CHAPTER I.
Gil Blas, not being able to reconcile himself to the Morals of the
Actresses, quits Arsenia, and gets into a more reputable. Service.
CHAPTER II.
Aurora's Reception of Gil Blas. Their Conversation.
CHAPTER III.
A great Change at Don Vincent's. Aurora's strange Resolution.
CHAPTER IV.
"The Fatal Marriage"--a Novel.
CHAPTER V.
The Behavior of Aurora de Guzman on her Arrival at Salamanca.
CHAPTER VI.
Aurora's Devices to secure Don Lewis Pacheco's Affections.
ALAIN RENÉ LESAGE.
A critic of whom I desire to speak with all respect--the Rector of
Lincoln--has said that "mere style cannot confer immortality upon any
book apart from its contents." The context from which this remark is
taken deals with the Provinciales and _Pensées_ of Pascal, concerning
which Mr. Pattison thinks that the former are but an ephemeral
pamphlet, the latter are for all time. So startling a judgment makes
the reader a little inclined to dogmatize hyperbolically in his turn,
and to say that there is nothing perennial but style. This, indeed,
would be merely running from one extreme to another; nevertheless,
there is more truth in it than in the other exaggeration, for the
attitude of men's minds changes singularly, from one time to another,
with regard to any "contents;" it changes very little with regard to
the expression of those contents. This is, perhaps, nowhere seen
more clearly than in the case of very voluminous authors whose works
are preserved in unequal remembrance. When such cases are examined,
it will generally be found that the reason for the preference which
posterity has expressed has been almost entirely due to literary
merit. Between the merit of the contents of Defoe's different novels
there is not very much to choose; yet no one who speaks with
competence will question that the literary art of _Robinson Crusoe_
is, on the whole, far superior to that of _Moll Flanders_ and
_Colonel Jack_. So, in the not wholly dissimilar case of our present
author, the contents of _Estévanille Gonzales_ and _The Bachelor of
Salamanca_ are not much less interesting, if they are less
interesting at all, than those of _Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_,
while _Guzman d'Alfarache_ has perhaps a positive advantage over much
of the latter. But Lesage was never so well inspired from the
literary point of view as in the two works which have been justly
deemed his masterpieces, and in this lies the justice of the
selection.
The reasons of the inequality of Lesage's work are to be sought in
the same cause which, in all probability, accounts for such
inequality in all cases. Where men never write below themselves, it
will almost invariably be found that their work has either been
thrown off in the heyday of youth, or, if spread over a long course
of years, has been written for pleasure merely; at any rate, without
any immediate pressure of want. Pegasus, as one of the greatest of
English writers in our time has put it, must, in the unhappier cases,
be too frequently spurred, and will not always answer to the spur.
Now the long life of the author of _Gil Blas_ was anything but one of
ease. He had few patrons, and was not of a temper to have many.
Literature, unfortunately, was stick, crutch and all to him, and he
was unlucky in his law affairs, a fact which probably accounts for
the continual satire he pours on law and lawyers. Yet, by birth, at
any rate, he belonged to the profession. His father, Claude Lesage,
was at once Advocate, Notary and _Greffier_ (Registrar) of the Royal
Court of the small district of Rhuys, the out-of-the-way peninsula
which bounds the Morbihan on its eastern side. Alain René was born
on the 8th of May, 1668 (his mother being by name Jeanne Brenugat),
at Sarzeau, the chief town of the district, which, it may be well to
remind readers, was also the locality of the Abbey of St. Gildas de
Rhuys, the very uneasy refuge of Abelard after his calamities. It is
not a little characteristic of the peculiar bent of Lesage's genius,
that it shows hardly any local colour, though Brittany has, of all
French provinces, left most mark on her children as a rule, and
though Lesage's birthplace lay in perhaps the most striking part of
the Duchy, But Lesage left his native province young; he never, so
far as I know, returned to it, and he very probably had unpleasant
associations connected therewith. The father's triple office was
profitable enough, but he died when his son was young, and the
property he left him was dissipated or embezzled by a dishonest
guardian, a personage of frequent occurrence in those days, and one
whom Lesage smites again and again in his novels. That the boy was
at school at Vannes, the neighbouring episcopal city, until 1686, is
known; but this is almost all that is known about his youth, and then
he disappears for some eight years. It has been supposed that he may
have held some small post in the financial department of the
province, or that he may have continued his studies at Paris, the
latter being by far the more probable hypothesis. Anyhow, in 1692 he
was admitted as an advocate at the Bar of Paris. But he apparently
got no clients, and when he was six-and-twenty he took to himself a
wife, Marie Elisabeth Huyard. She is said to have been remarkably
beautiful, and they lived for many years together, it would seem,
happily enough; but she had no fortune, she was only a tradesman's
daughter, and his marriage can hardly have added to the young
lawyer's resources. Falling in with an old schoolfellow, Danchet,
who had already made some mark in literature, he was recommended by
him to seek the same refuge for the destitute. His _coup d'essai_, a
translation of the letters of Aristænetus, which appeared in 1695 (he
had been married in August or September, 1694), has made his
biographers and critics rather merry. He certainly might have done
better, but it is doubtful whether the oddity of the
choice--comparatively worthless as the book is--struck that age as it
strikes ours. The indiscriminate reign of the classics, early and
late, good and bad, genuine and spurious, was not yet over, and many
a young man of letters had made his _début_ with work not
intrinsically better. Lesage, however, had no luck--he had not much
at any period during his life--and the book fell flat. A more useful
adviser in every sense, however, fell to his lot in the person of the
Abbe de Lyonne. Lyonne not merely gave him, or procured him, a
pension or annuity of six hundred livres--no despicable assistance to
modest housekeeping at that time, when living at Paris was
extraordinarily cheap--but recommended him to study Spanish
literature, of which he himself was a great lover. Three-quarters of
a century before, this literature had been greatly admired and
largely borrowed from in France, but the age of the great writers of
Louis the Thirteenth's time and his son's had put it out of fashion.
Lesage began by simple translation or adaptation, and, as in the case
of Aristænetus, he was not too fortunate in his models. In drama, at
least, he did not go far wrong, choosing Rojas, Lope de Vega and
Calderon for his originals, and producing plays which were sometimes
acted. But a version of the worthless _New Don Quixote_ of
Avellaneda was sorry work for the future author of _Gil Blas_. The
play which he conveyed from Calderon--_Don César Ursin_--had some
merit; and in 1707, being then hard upon his fortieth year, he scored
two great successes. His little piece of _Crispin Rival de son
Maître_ appeared, and was loudly and deservedly applauded, while the
_Diable_ obtained still greater favour. It ran through several
editions in the year, and many legends of the usual character we told
about its success. The most characteristic, and probably the truest,
is that Boileau found his footboy with a copy, and declared that if
such a book stayed a night in his house the boy should not stay
another. Lesage was already hailed as a Molière Redivivus, and this
of itself was sufficient to irritate Boileau in his sour old age.
But it would probably have been sufficient for that vigorous but
narrow critic that the book was not in any style which he had himself
recommended, or which he could understand; for Boileau was the
incarnation of the merely French spirit of literature in its most
contracted form; Lesage, as we shall see, was not specially or
primarily French at all except in his wit, the very quality which the
author of the Namur Ode was least qualified to appreciate. Lesage,
however, had not yet arrived at his apogee. Despite his theatrical
successes he was never on very good terms with the players of the
regular theatre, and a small piece--_Les Etrennes_--was refused by
them at the beginning of 1708. The author took it back, set to work
on it, and refashioned it into _Turcaret_, the best French comedy,
beyond all doubt, of the eighteenth century, and probably the best of
its kind to be found outside the covers of Molière's works. It is in
connection with _Turcaret_, the success of which was very great,
though the powerful class offended by it did not conceal their
displeasure, that one of the few personal and characteristic
anecdotes we possess of Lesage is told. He had been asked to read
his play to a fashionable company at the Duchess of Bouillon's, and,
being delayed by law business, was late. The Duchess--let it be
remembered that it was some half-century before all Paris interested
itself in the quarrel of two "miserable scribblers who live in
garrets"--rebuked him with some asperity for keeping her an hour
waiting. "Eh bien, Madame," replied the poet; "je vous ai fait
perdre une heure, je vais vous en faire gagner deux;" and he put his
manuscript in his pocket, and, resisting all entreaties, went away.
The anecdote rests on the authority of Colle, who, in such a case, is
fairly trustworthy, and it probably explains why Lesage's life was
one of struggle. Though his independence was, most likely, natural
and usual, it is said to have been made more touchy on this
particular occasion by the fact that he had lost the case which had
detained him. However this may be, his dissatisfaction with the
_Maison de Molière_ soon assumed a still more active form, and for
five-and-twenty years the best living comic dramatist of France
gained his bread chiefly by writing for the stage of the _Foire_, the
irregular but licensed booths set up during fair time. Lesage is
said to have written no less than twenty-four farce-operettas, as
they may perhaps best be termed, for these boards, and the number of
his works for them alone, or in collaboration, is sometimes put at
sixty-four and sometimes at a hundred and one. It was about the time
that he took to this occupation, in which he was kept in company by
not a few writers of talent, if not of genius, notably by Piron, that
_Gil Blas_ appeared in 1715. This, his greatest work, was scarcely
so popular as _Le Diable Boiteux_, and it was long before it was
finished, while the number of editions during the thirty years of the
author's life was by comparison surprisingly small. Among the few
positive statements that we have about Lesage's literary gains is one
to the effect that a hundred pistoles had been advanced to him as
prepayment for the last volume several years before it was completed.
It does not of course follow that this was the whole price. The two
first parts, as has been said, appeared in 1715, the third in 1724,
the fourth in 1735. Thus Lesage evidently took time about his
greatest work, though he was compelled to do much else in a hurry.
His productions were sufficiently miscellaneous, though most of them
had to do with the vein of literary ore which had been so fortunately
indicated to him. A version of _Guzman d'Alfarache_, much altered
and improved; _Histoire d'Estévanille Gonzales_ and _Le Bachelier de
Salamanque_, were the chief of these, while he also translated the
_Orlando Inamorato_. A curious collection of imaginary letters,
called the _Valise Trouvée_, and some minor works, came from his pen;
besides which he was at the close of his life occupied on a
collection of anecdotes which appeared after his death. He also
superintended a collection of his _Théâtre de la Foire_, as he had
previously one of his regular pieces. One work not yet mentioned,
the "Life and Adventures of M. de Beauchêne, Captain of Flibustiers,"
brings him curiously near to Defoe, especially as in this, not less
than in the English cases, a groundwork of actual memoirs is said or
supposed to have existed. From his children Lesage had both trouble
and profit. The eldest was bred a lawyer, but became an actor and
was disowned by his father. The second took orders, obtained a
canonry at Boulogne, and became the mainstay of the family. Worn out
by seventy years of life and thirty or forty of literary work, Lesage
about 1740 retired with his wife and daughter to the city where his
son lived, and spent there his remaining years, dying on the 17th of
November, 1747. A very curious and interesting letter from the Count
de Tressan is in existence, giving an account of him in his very last
days. Tressan is known to all students of French literature as
having laboriously dressed the stories of the Chansons de Gestes in
eighteenth-century garments for the readers of the _Biblothèque des
Romans_--to which act we owe Wieland's _Oberon_--and as having, in
ignorance of the existence of the original, bravely extemporized a
_Chanson de Roland_, which stands, perhaps, in more absurd contrast
to the true Chanson than any other conjectural restoration does to
any other original. But he had a real interest in literature, and
seems to have been amiable enough at this time. He was a military
officer of high standing in the days of Fontenoy, and after that
battle was for some time at Boulogne, where he used to visit Lesage.
"The old man (he was then about seventy-seven) was," says Tressan,
"in a state of half torpor till midday, but he then revived, and was
fairly in possession of his faculties till sundown"--a fact from
which the philosophic Count makes some large inferences in proper
eighteenth-century style. But, even when most wide awake, Lesage was
very deaf, and nothing would induce him to put his trumpet to his ear
when persons he disliked were his interlocutors, though it went up
readily enough when any one he liked approached. This is the last
and one of the very few personal pieces of gossip we have about him,
and it proves satisfactorily that a hard worker and a great
benefactor of his species, who had not in his time enjoyed too many
of the gifts of fortune, at any rate passed his last years in peace
and in such comfort as might be. His wife outlived him but a very
short time and died at the age of eighty.
If an author is to be judged only by those works whose popularity has
stood the test of time, Lesage need only be considered as the author
of _Crispin Rival de son Maître_, of _Turcaret_, of _Le Diable
Boiteux_, and of _Gil Blas de Santillane_. His other prose works
are, indeed, of considerable bulk, but they are for the most part
distinguished by the merits of the more celebrated pieces in a less
prominent, and by the faults in a more prominent, degree. His
_Guzman d'Alfarache_ is chiefly interesting as a specimen of
extremely skilful _remaniement_, a process more often applied in
modern times to dramatic work than to prose fiction, and which,
perhaps, in the case of prose fiction, has never been so well managed
as here. _M. de Beauchêne_ has, as has been already mentioned, some
interesting points of resemblance to the methods of Defoe. _Le
Bachelier de Salamangue_ has a certain interest, because of its
connection with the theory or hypothesis of a lost Spanish original
of _Gil Blas_. If Lesage himself may be trusted, there was certainly
such an original in the case of the _Bachelor_, and one of the many
suppositions tending to deprive him of the credit of his greatest
work supposes that both were extracted or rehandled from the same
work. _Estévanille Gonzales_ is, perhaps, the least attractive of
all, while it is also one of the least original, and the translations
from the Italian, &c., need not delay us. Among the minor works the
chief are:--first, a lively and well-written little dialogue, called
_Une Journée des Parques_, which has had the luck to be oftener
reprinted than most of Lesage's _opuscula_; secondly, the
already-mentioned collection of imaginary letters called _La Valise
Trouvée_; and, lastly, the collection of anecdotes which was the
author's last work and which was not published until after his death.
Of Lesage, however, it is truer than of most writers, that he is best
seen in his best work. His pot-boilers usually have something of his
easy style and much of his pleasant subacid wit, but they fail, as a
rule, to show the power of truthful character-drawing which was his
greatest merit, and their wit itself degenerates into mere smartness
more frequently than could be wished.
Somewhat more notice must be given to his work for the _Théâtre de la
Foire_, not merely because it has considerable intrinsic merit, but
because of its volume, of the constant labour spent on it for full a
quarter of a century by the author, and last, but not least, because
of its curious form. The pieces which were played at the fairs of
Paris were very popular, and their popularity was the subject of
constant jealousy on the part of the regular actors of the _Théâtre
Français_, though the other two branches of the legitimate drama, the
opera and the _Comédie Italienne_, were sometimes more or less in
alliance with their little sister. Not a few of Lesage's pieces deal
directly with the vicissitudes of _la Foire_. The plays represented
on these boards were a curious mixture of the _commedia dell' arte_
and the old French farce. Harlequin in particular is an almost
invariable character, though the full complement of Pierrot,
Scaramouche, Colombine, &c., only occasionally appears. The plays
were of three kinds. One of these was drama reduced to nearly its
simplest terms. There was no speaking on the stage and the actors
confined themselves to pantomime in dumbshow, while two little
cherubs sat up aloft with a long roller of wood, from which, from
time to time, they unrolled placards on which short songs, set to
popular airs, were inscribed. These songs were sung by the audience,
assisted by the actors and orchestra. Here, of course, the author's
work was limited to the conception of the action, the expression of
it by stage directions to the actors, and the composition of the
songs. A second kind of piece was the _Vaudeville_ proper, in which
the whole play is written in lyrical _couplets_. In the third and
most elaborate, ordinary prose dialogue is mixed up with songs. This
last sometimes attained considerable dimensions and was divided into
acts. These popular pieces were, throughout the eighteenth century,
composed by authors whose literary standing was by no means low--such
as Lesage, Piron, Collé, and many others--and when a piece had a
particular vogue it was not unfrequently transferred, at the command
of some great personage, to the boards of the opera. Our author, as
has been said, wrote a very large number of these curious
compositions in all the three styles just described. Their literary
value is, of course, far from great, but they display a good deal of
invention, a command of easy verse, and much less indulgence in the
besetting sin of the fair theatre, license of language, than most of
their fellows. _La Princesse de Carizme_, one of the longest, and
possessing something like a plot, is also one of the best. It turns
on the well-known story of a princess whose beauty turns all who
behold her mad. But, on the whole, the pieces which deal with the
rivalry of the _Foire_ and the graver dramatic institutions are,
perhaps, the most amusing. The contrasted display of the _Comédie
Française_, her solemn tragic airs and the mannerisms of her lighter
mood, with the impudent coquettishness of the personified _Foire_,
gave Lesage a good opportunity, of which he did not scruple to avail
himself. The contrast, of course, is an old one, and something like
it had been frequently brought with success on the popular stage,
even in early times. _La Querelle des Théâtres_ has something in it
which reminds the reader of the old morality of _Science et Anerye_.
The music of the pieces, too, has its interest, because it shows the
remarkable conservatism of the French populace in these matters.
Now-a-days new airs are a _sine quâ non_ for a comic opera that is to
be successful. Lesage's pieces are all written to a few score tunes,
which remained on duty during the whole eighteenth century, and may
be still seen at the head of Béranger's songs a hundred years and
more afterwards. But it must, of course, be understood that only
regular students of literature can be recommended to attack Lesage's
_Théâtre de la Foire_. It has received some mention here chiefly
because most of his critics have been content to give second-hand
judgments of it, and a second-hand judgment in matters literary has a
habit of going farther and farther from the truth as it passes from
pen to pen.
The two pieces of Lesage which, if they have not actually kept the
stage, have at least secured their place in collections of the French
drama, demand a longer mention. I say if they have not kept the
stage, for I have no positive knowledge as to the question whether
_Crispin_ and _Turcaret_ have of late years been represented. They
are certainly amusing enough to read, and _Turcaret_ is something
more than amusing. _Crispin Rival de son Maître_ is a much less
ambitious piece than _Turcaret_. It is, in fact, only a longish
farce in one act, but in a great number of scenes. Something of what
an English critic once very unjustly called the "exaggerated manner
of Molière" may be observed in it. Indeed, this phrase of Hazlitt
has a good deal of truth when applied to this little piece; it is
Molière's manner exaggerated by recourse to the Spanish style of
comedy, from which the great playwright had refined and purified his
own. There is the usual impecunious and unlucky lover, but the usual
valet, instead of backing his master, enters with another valet into
a wild plan for marrying the heroine himself. By playing into each
other's hands the two rascals succeed for a time in hoodwinking the
father, and, by gross flattery, in winning over the mother to their
side. The scheme is upset by the simple fact that the father of the
suitor whom Crispin personates soon appears, and by the still simpler
one that the master, of course, recognizes and identifies his
servant. But the intrigue, impossible as it is, is very briskly kept
up, and the short bustling scenes hardly allow the audience to
reflect on the improbability of the thing. The dialogue is full of
brilliancy, rather resembling Congreve than Molière, and this, being
unquestionably the best of its kind that a Parisian audience had
heard for a generation, probably secured the popularity of the piece.
_Turcaret_ is a much more important production. It has the full five
acts of a regular comedy, and, though its plot is rather loose, the
ruin and discomfiture of the financier Turcaret give a sufficient
unity to it. The action, too, is well sustained, but the merit of
the piece--a merit for which it stands almost alone in the French
comedy of the eighteenth century--lies in the striking projection of
the characters and the lively natural traits with which they are
drawn. The objection which has been made to these characters--that
they are rather partial than complete sketches of human
nature--applies to all French drama and to almost all artificial
comedy, whether French or English. It would not be easy to find a
French drama, out of Molière, in which so many figures stand out so
strikingly from the canvass, as is the case in _Turcaret_. The
financier, ashamed of the lowness of his origin, ruthless to his
debtors, and a swindler in his dealings with his associates, but
capable of being bubbled of his money in the most open fashion by a
great lady who condescends to permit his addresses; his wife, an
incarnation of vulgar provincial vice, as desperately jealous of her
husband as she is shamelessly unfaithful to him; the chevalier who
exploits Turcaret's mistress just as that mistress exploits Turcaret;
the baroness, not too scrupulous to plunder her suitor so long as she
believes his addresses to be honourable, but generous enough and not
wholly corrupted; the reckless marquis, who has at least the
advantage over his friend, the chevalier, that he is not a knave: all
these characters, in themselves mere stock characters of the oldest
date, are made to live and breathe by touches of Lesage's genius.
The most often-quoted scene of the play, where Madame Turcaret,
introduced to the baroness's salon, gives an account of the
diversions of Valognes, where "on lit tout les ouvrages d'esprit
qu'on fait à Cherbourg, à St. Lo et à Coutances, qui valent bien les
ouvrages de Vire et de Caen" is a masterpiece of its kind, and not
much less can be said of the adroit servility of the waiting-maid
Lisette. Frontin, her lover, has the defect of all the valets who
descend from the Menandrian comedy--the defect of exceeding
improbability--but he is not more improbable than Molière's Scapins
and Gros Renés, and, indeed, not so improbable as some of them. It
is also noticeable that, though the dialogue of _Turcaret_ is as full
of witticisms as any reasonable man can desire, it has not the fault
which is frequently noticeable in French manner-comedies and almost
always in English--the fault of letting mere wit combats occupy the
characters to the detriment of the dramatic interest of the play.
Everything in _Turcaret_ tends duly to its end. There are few things
more surprising, and perhaps it may be added, less satisfactory, in
connection with the theory that a subsidized and established theatre
tends to encourage the production of works of genius, than the fact
of the subsequent disagreement of the players with Lesage. It is
almost inconceivable that the man who wrote such a play should not
have had it in him to write others of equal, if not greater,
goodness. But, as we have seen, Lesage had no opportunity of
improving upon _Turcaret_ or repeating his success, being almost
immediately diverted from the regular theatre to the _Foire_, where,
whatever he may have done, he certainly did not work for posterity.
His dramatic career, indeed, was that of Molière reversed. The
earlier writer began with a long apprenticeship to farce-writing and
then turned his attention to regular comedy, the other began with
regular comedy and was afterwards driven to farce. When one
considers the special opening which drama presents to a man who, like
Lesage, prefers to work on the inventions of others rather than to
spin everything out of his own brains, his abandonment of it seems
much to be regretted. Perhaps, however, on the whole the world has
not lost; for where a play gives amusement now and then to hundreds,
a novel gives it constantly to thousands, and it is extremely
improbable that the very best work that Lesage could ever have
produced in the way of drama would have added to the sum of human
enjoyment as much as _Gil Blas_ has added.
It has already been observed that Lesage's manner of dealing with his
originals when he wrote prose fiction sometimes resembled the usual
manner of dramatic authors. If, however, this latter manner
resembled the conduct of the author of _Le Diable Boiteux_ in the
composition of this work, the charge of plagiarism which is
constantly brought against dramatists could hardly stand. The
_Diable Boiteux_ of Lesage and the _Diablo Cojuelo_ of Luis Velez de
Guevara stand to each other in a very curious relation. At first the
later work looks almost like a translation of the earlier; for two
chapters it is a translation and very little more. But suddenly
Lesage seems to have felt his own power and strikes off on an
entirely new path. Neither the course of the story, nor the
conclusion, nor even the great majority of the episodes and detached
anecdotes in the _Diable Boiteux_ are derived, even by suggestion,
from Guevara, while the simplicity of the French style and the
unbroken stream of lively _narquois_ narration contrast as strongly
as anything can do with the euphuism of Guevara and the singular
encomiastic digressions on all sorts of personages which figure
largely in the _Diablo Cojuelo_. The substance of the book is made
up partly, no doubt, of anecdotes borrowed from divers Spanish
sources, partly of more or less historical gossip about French men
and women of the author's own time--Dufresny the comic author, Baron
the actor, Ninon de L'Enclos are usually specified as
figuring--partly of inventions of Lesage's own. As most people know,
or ought to know, the plot is sufficiently simple. A young student,
for whom an ambush has been laid by his perfidious mistress, escapes
by way of the roof, makes his way into a neighbouring garret, which
happens to be the laboratory of a magician, and is besought by a
voice out of a phial to deliver the speaker from durance by breaking
the bottle. The request is complied with, and the imprisoned sprite
turns out to be Asmodeus, _Démon de la Luxure_. Here almost all
borrowing from Guevara ceases. In the Spanish the new confederates
journey to different parts of Spain, and the incidents of the story
are mainly supplied by the efforts of envious devils to recapture
Asmodeus. In the French the general plan is based on an exertion of
the power of Asmodeus, whereby he unroofs the houses of Madrid and
exhibits the fortunes of the inmates to the student, Don Cleofas,
while an additional human interest is imparted by a fire, in which
the good-natured and grateful demon rescues a young lady of high
birth in the shape of Cleofas, and thereby secures for his liberator
a prosperous marriage. As a connected story, the original, despite
its digressions and episodes, perhaps has the advantage, though the
ultimate decision on this point must be left to those who, unlike the
present writer, can speak with equal authority on Spanish and on
French literature. Lesage's pre-eminence must be sought in the
scattered traits of wit and knowledge of human nature which he
sprinkles liberally over his work, and in the brisk and vigorous
style wherein the book is written. This latter is the real charm of
the _Diable Boiteux_. Lesage took something from La Rochefoucauld,
something and perhaps more from St. Evremond, and, availing himself
of the general improvement in French prose style which had resulted
from the schoolmastering of the academic critics, from Balzac to
Boileau, produced a mixture of singular pungency and elegance.
Couched as the whole work is in the form of a lengthy dialogue
between the demon and Don Cleofas, the author has availed himself of
the characteristics of his characters in a sufficiently artful
fashion. The petulance of the student never allows the good demon to
engage uninterrupted in too long a narration, but constantly recalls
him to this or that interesting incident, which makes a digression in
the midst of the histories and prevents any feeling of _longueur_
from stealing on the reader. Now this is a feeling which the general
plan of the French-Spanish _Roman d'Aventures_ adopted by Lesage was
only too much calculated to produce. The pedigree of stories of this
kind was a long one. They arose unquestionably, on the one hand,
from the prose Greek romances to which the Byzantine period gave
rise, and on the other from the incomparable romances of chivalry, to
use the usual though rather indiscriminate term of which France must
claim the invention. To do the _Chanson de Geste_, the oldest form
of the latter variety, justice, digression was not among its faults.
But from the first the Greek prose romance seems to have been liable
to it, and from the date of the _Romans d'Aventures_, which express
in a way the union of the two, it was a crying sin of the western
romance, whether it was written in verse or in prose. Everything by
degrees became sacrificed to length, and the easiest way of attaining
length was by indulging in numerous episodic excursions. Moral
disquisitions, personal panegyrics, sentimental discussions on points
of amatory law, which the earlier seventeenth century had endured,
were impossible at the time when Lesage wrote, and he confined
himself solely to the story within a story which his English
followers, Smollett and Fielding, adopted from him, and which lasted
even to the days of Scott, with the advantage to literature of
producing what is, perhaps, the best short tale in any
language--Wandering Willie's legend in _Redgauntlet_. By that time,
however, the necessity of connecting the digressions definitely and
directly with the general story had forced itself on the
consideration of the romancer. Lesage's age was less difficult, and
his episodes might be cut out without damaging such central story as
he has, but with a woful consequence to the total interest and
attraction of the book. What saved _Le Diable Boiteux_ was, let it
be once more repeated, the smartness of the satire, the acuteness of
the observation of life, and the pure fluent style in which the whole
was embodied. The one means which has always been able to move a
French audience or body of readers has been the untranslatable
_malice_; and Lesage possessed the secret of this in an eminent
degree. But he had more than this--he had also the faculty of
informing his malicious side-hits at human nature, with a certain
breadth and truth in which Voltaire himself fails except when he is
at his very best, and of never going out of his way for a gibe, a
mistake only too common among French authors. The fantastic setting;
the absence of any attempt to get into the pulpit and preach, while a
certain subtle under-flavour of moralizing reconciled the most
moralizing of all centuries; the urbanity of the style, and the
allusions, artfully scattered here and there, to personal adventures
and personal gossip, were quite sufficient to attract contemporaries.
That the popularity of the _Diable Boiteux_ has been more than
ephemeral shows--let us repeat it, for it cannot be too often
repeated--that observation of Nature, enbalmed with due preparation
of art, is never likely to lose its hold upon men; if it were, adieu
to literature.
The good qualities of _Turcaret_ and the _Diable Boiteux_ appeared in
far more striking measure and co-ordinated far more skilfully in the
great work which these volumes present once more to the reader in the
version of the greatest but one of Lesage's followers. Of the
general merits of _Gil Blas_ it is necessary to say very little. Nor
is it necessary to add in this particular place anything to what has
been said and will be said of the comparatively half-hearted
estimation in which his countrymen have held the writer of this
masterpiece. In French histories of literature Lesage holds but a
subordinate place, and he is sometimes treated as second in the race
to Defoe, though it is hardly necessary to say that the first and
best of the great Englishman's romances is younger than _Gil Blas_ by
nearly five years. Argument and abstract are equally superfluous.
How _Gil Blas_ left his scarcely-unwilling kin, how he learnt by
bitter experience not to trust too much to flatterers, how he fell
among thieves, among the minions of the law, among actors (on whom
Lesage took a terrible vengeance in this book for the treatment they
had accorded to him), even those to whom the pleasure--_pace_ Mr.
James Payn--of reading our book is yet to come, know, in virtue of a
thousand quotations and allusions in every kind of literature. Of
the latter parts of the book, which show in the author some such an
idea as that by which Dickens, either before or after the fact,
excused the transformation of Mr. Pickwick's character, perhaps less
is known by those who have not actually read it. Only one
episode--the famous and, indeed, immortal relapse of _Gil Blas_ into
youthfulness in the matter of the Archbishop of Granada--has passed
into general knowledge. I shall only say that it is perhaps the very
happiest holding up of a mirror to one particular weak place of human
nature that I know. Few people perhaps, save reviewers, who are in
continual receipt of expostulations from the reviewed, know how
eternal is the verity of the presentment. By some unhappy fortune
the particular stanza of the poem, the particular chapter of the
novel, the particular juncture of the plot, which the critic happens
to blame is the very thing that is best in the book. "On n'a jamais
composé de meilleur homélie que celle qui a le malheur de n'avoir pas
notre approbation." This is only an illustration of the supreme
merit of the book--its absolute truth to Nature. But another
illustration may, perhaps, be pardonably given. It has been said, or
hinted, that in the last two volumes Gil Blas is a much better as
well as a much less ridiculous personage than he is in the
first--this is especially the case in the last. Prosperity, age, the
absence of temptation, account for this. But Lesage's unpitying,
because absolutely veracious, talent would not suffer him to turn his
intriguing fortune-hunter into a saint. The ugly episode of the
journey to Toledo, in which the admired minister Olivarez and the
respectable reformed rake Gil Blas play such awkward parts, is an
instance of the truth which is put in the homely phrase Defoe
loved--"What is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh."
Now-a-days, perhaps, when the naturalist school, in its scorn of the
namby-pamby, rushes into the opposite extreme and will have nothing
but vice and ugliness, such a book as _Gil Blas_ is infinitely more
instructive, as well as more refreshing to read, than all the
rose-pink pictures of impossible virtues and all the half-told tales
of life with the dark side of it kept out of sight that literature
can muster. It will scarcely be pretended by any brisk young
novelist of the nineteenth century that he has more insight than
Lesage, scarcely, either, that Lesage was afraid to say what occurred
to him or that his literary vocabulary and general equipment were
unequal to the task. Yet here is a book as free from cant or from
taint of the _hérésie de l'enseignement_ as any one can desire, and
which yet leaves no bad taste in the mouth, meddles with no abnormal
crimes, and suggests as a total reflexion not merely that all's well
that ends well, but that in most cases with fair luck all does end
fairly well.
The question of the origin, or, if the word be preferred, of the
originality, of _Gil Blas_ may not be of much intrinsic importance.
But its traditional importance in the history of literature is
considerable, and something, perhaps, must be said about it here.
The assertions of the more or less complete indebtedness of the
author to a Spanish original may be classed under three heads. There
is, first, the assertion that _Gil Blas_ is taken from the _Marcos de
Obregon_ of Vincent Espinel. This was advanced very shortly after
the appearance of the book, and currency was given to it by Voltaire,
who roundly repeated it, in consequence, beyond all doubt, of the
galling attacks which Lesage had made upon his early dramatic and
epic efforts, not merely in his farces but in _Gil Blas_ itself,
where the author of _Zaire_ figures as Don Gabriel Triaquero. The
second is due to a Spanish Jesuit author, who, avowedly setting
before him the object of claiming _Gil Blas_ for his own country,
endeavours to make out that it is simply a translation of a Spanish
original. The third is a more elaborate hypothesis and more
difficult of disproof--its foundation, such as it is, has been
already alluded to. It is supposed that Lesage extracted the matter,
at least, of _Gil Blas_, as well as that of the _Bachelier de
Salamanque_, from a manuscript Spanish original which has since
disappeared. As to the first charge, it is one of those curiously
hazardous ones, the making of which can only be accounted for on the
general principle that some of most handfuls of mud which are thrown
is likely to stick, for Espinel's work is unanimously confessed by
competent examiners to be not in the least like _Gil Blas_ on the
whole, though a very few detached traits may have been taken by
Lesage from it, as they almost certainly were for others of his prose
fictions. The patriotic hypothesis of Father Isla suffers only from
the fact that there is not the faintest trace of a Spanish _Gil Blas_
or of any allusion to such a work. As for the third, it is
obviously, and on the face of it, as impossible to disprove as to
prove. There may have been French _Macbeths_ and _Lears_ from which
Shakspeare adapted the existing pieces, for aught we know. But, when
we dismiss merely hypothetical argument and examine the matter
coolly, we find, first, that there is absolutely no external evidence
that Lesage did in any way plagiarize _Gil Blas_; secondly, that
there is overwhelming internal evidence that, while he made free use
of his Spanish predecessors for details, for local colour and so
forth the essential part of the book is fairly his own. The
"picaroon" romance, as it is called, was a specially Spanish variety
of _Roman d'Aventures_ which, abandoning giants and enchanters on the
one hand and the long-winded sentimentalities of the _Amadis_ and the
Scudéry romances on the other, confined itself to the actual life of
the still but half-civilized dominions of the King of Spain and to
the most exciting incidents of that life. Immense numbers of these
books were written by Spaniards during the seventeenth century; and
with many, if not the majority, of these Lesage was, we know,
familiar. Many of the separate incidents of _Gil Blas_ have been
traced to this literature, and, perhaps, more might be so. But there
is no reason to believe that the general _cadre_ into which Lesage
fitted these is not his own, and there is every reason to believe
that the peculiar spirit with which he informs the whole and which
gives it its peculiar value is absolutely his. The shrewd wit,
neither sententious nor solemn, of his isolated sayings is assuredly
not Spanish; the peculiar universality of his indications of the
weaknesses of human nature is still less so. There is little of the
kind, I may venture to say, in the greatest of Spanish writers, in
Cervantes himself; there is nothing of the kind--competent
authorities vouch for it--in any lesser Spanish writer. To the
higher side of Spanish imagination, its poetry, its magnificence, its
forgetfulness of the baser sides of life, Lesage has no claim to
approach. But in regard to a sort of prosaic infallibility and
universality which he has he may as fairly pretend that the Spaniards
have nothing of his. If there is little of Don Quixote there is,
perhaps, something of Sancho in some of his characters; but it is
only such an agreement as writers starting from the most diverse
points might attain.
To one charge which has been brought against _Gil Blas_, that of
undue length, it is difficult to offer a very valid defence. That
this length conduced to the anachronisms which the author admits in a
characteristic and sarcastic _avertissement_ is very probable, but
these are matters of very little consequence and may be ranked with
the sea-coast of Bohemia and Hector's reference to Aristotle. It is
of more importance that the extreme prolongation of the book has made
it--it may freely be admitted--to a certain extent tedious. Nor does
it seem reasonable to doubt that this prolongation was, in some
degree, artificial--that is to say, that the favour with which the
book was received and the offers of the publishers very likely
induced the author to extend it a good deal more than he had at first
designed. _Per contra_ it can only be alleged that, in the peculiar
style of which _Gil Blas_ is an example, there is no natural limit to
the exposition. The book having no defined plot, but being a picture
of _quotquot agunt homines_ in so far as the life of a particular
person touches that action, nothing but the death of the hero can be
said to bring it to a close. This, indeed, is of the essence of the
romance as opposed to the epic, and, in its so-called regular or
non-Shakspearean form, the drama. These two latter presuppose a
definite and limited plot. The romance does not, and it admits not
only an indefinite extension in a straight line, but also digressions
and episodes _ad infinitum_. That this is rather a weakness than a
strength of the style may certainly be admitted, and the fact had
been sufficiently exemplified, not merely in the mediæval poem and
prose romances but in the _Amadis_ cycle, where the reader is
conducted from generation to generation in a manner sufficient to
weary the patience of the most robust. But it was characteristic of
Lesage that he was an innovator rather in detail than in the general.
He did not produce the modern novel--that was reserved for his
younger contemporary Prévost. He only took an existing _genre_, made
many small improvements in it, and produced a masterpiece therein.
Perhaps it would be ungrateful to complain when he did so much that
he did no more.
In the controversies which have arisen about Lesage's greatest work
it is not very difficult to find a satisfactory explanation of his
great and peculiar value. For the Spanish claim--absolutely
unsupported as it is by one tittle of external evidence, and, indeed,
as we may almost say, completely as it is rebutted by all such
evidence--rests in reality on an expressed or understood idea that no
one but a native writer could have so dealt with Spain and Spaniards.
The retort to the charge is as instructive as the charge itself.
Frenchmen appeal to Germans, Englishmen, and other foreigners to
decide the cause, and the referees give their decision in a manner
which is decisive. _Gil Blas_, they say, is not specially a
Spaniard, though the art of his creator has dressed him up
marvellously in the habits, garments and speech of Spain. He is
simply a man, and the accuracy with which the author has hit the
universal beneath the particular would have equally enabled him, had
he chosen, to draw an Englishman or a German, and would have entitled
Englishmen or Germans, had they been sufficiently shortsighted, to
claim his work as borrowed or stolen from an English or German
original. The reply is unanswerable, and the more one reads Lesage
the more convinced one is of the sufficiency of it and the more proof
one finds of its truth. It is in this quality of universality, of
striking at the essential humanity of men and dealing with their
accidental nationality only in such manner as might suit his purpose
that Lesage's great genius consists, and in this quality he is, as it
seems to me, at the head of all French writers, and only second to
Shakspeare. Of course the range of the two is very different, it is
even hardly commensurable. Lesage had his faculty at complete
command within certain very restricted limits, but beyond those
limits he was not in the least master of it, indeed it can hardly be
said that he endeavoured to show it at all. Whether his thorough and
comparatively early steeping in one peculiar and extremely artificial
kind of literature--the picaroon romances and intrigue-dramas of
Spain--narrowed his mind at the same time that it sharpened it is a
question rather of psychology than of literature; but it is certain
that he shows very little tendency to wander out of his own narrow
circle, and that when he does so he becomes merely an ordinary man of
letters, possessed of a pleasant wit and of a ready and skilful pen.
But within his circle he hardly yields to the master himself.
Indeed, Gil Blas may hold up his head in any company, even in the
company of Shakspeare's children. There is the same invariable
consistency, the same total absence of false notes, the same
completeness of presentation. It was in this latter that Lesage
differed most from his countrymen. The fatal doctrine of the ruling
passion had made but little impression upon him. In drawing Gil Blas
he has not an abstraction of intrigue and courtiership of the lower
class before him as a model, he has a man who, for a long time, is
given up partly by the unkindness of fortune, partly by natural bent,
to intrigue and courtiership. To the last, touches of Nature, though
they naturally grow fewer and fewer, chequer and diversify the
presentment. Now this was what the French, since they had given
themselves up to swallow the doctrines and do the bidding of Horace,
as represented or misrepresented by the native critics of the
Malherbe-Boileau school, could not attain to, and could hardly even
understand. Had Boileau lived a little longer it may be shrewdly
suspected that he would have regarded _Gil Blas_ with much more
indignation than that with which he regarded _Le Liable Boiteux_, and
it is noteworthy that the greater work was far less popular with its
author's countrymen than the lesser. They would, doubtless, have
liked Achilles to be always _iracundus inexorabilis acer_, and would
have preferred that Gil Blas should have outwitted the parasite in
the matter of the trout and kept the favour of the Archbishop of
Granada. _Gil Blas_, too, is far less full than _Le Diable Boiteux_
of the epigrammatic _pointes_ which have never ceased to delight the
true Frenchman--and, indeed, they are delightful enough--and which
reach their climax in the writings of Voltaire. Such sayings as:
"Vous n'avez pas des idées justes de notre enfer"--"On nous
reconcilia, nous nous embrassames, et depuis ce temps nous sommes
ennemis mortels"--"Je sais qu'il-y-a de bons remèdes mais je ne sais
pas s'il-y-a de bons médecins"--"Tout payeur est traité comme un
mari," and a hundred things besides, are worthy of the author of
_Candide_ at his very best, and his countrymen could not fail to
relish them. They were less keen to relish such a presentment as
that of Gil Blas, and therefore Lesage's fame, great as it has been
even in France, has been more European than French, and he is to be
quoted and compared with foreigners rather than with his countrymen.
There is another point of importance in which Lesage has a
resemblance to Shakspeare. He has not merely in some not small
measure the quality of universality, but he has, and this in very
great measure, the quality of detachment. He seems to look at his
characters with the same inscrutable impartiality as that with which
their creator contemplates Iago and Goneril, Macbeth and Claudius.
He does not describe their monkey tricks with any particular gusto,
at least of a personal kind, nor does he regard them with the least
moral indignation. All that does not concern him. Writing as he did
in a period of very low morality--there probably never was a time
when the general moral standard was lower in Europe than in the first
half of the eighteenth century--and taking for his models a mass of
writings dealing with unscrupulous adventures and intrigue, he has
had to describe what is bad much oftener than what is good. But it
is impossible to say either that he gloats over the vices and follies
which he describes, or that he records them with cynical amusement,
or that he holds them up for righteous detestation. The least little
appearance of the second attitude may sometimes be found in the
utterances of Asmodeus, which are as personal as anything we have of
his; but even this is, for the most part, dramatic merely. This
quality, beyond all doubt, is connected with the former, and is,
indeed, to a great extent implied by it. When a man is very much in
earnest about points of morality, still more when he writes
definitely with a moral or immoral purpose, he seldom succeeds in
giving us the complete presentation of his characters. He is bribed,
without knowing it, by his prepossessions, he cannot help, if he
objects to the established standards of morality, softening the
vicious characters unduly, or hardening them unduly if he be among
the moral sub-division of the heretics of instruction. I do not know
that Lesage has been much examined by the strenuous advocates of the
moral element in literature, though they have not neglected Fielding,
his English parallel. The fact is that Fielding's irregular life
rather assists them, while the little that is known of Lesage goes to
show that he was in his own person an exemplary liver. It is,
however, true that the resemblances between Fielding and Lesage are
great, not merely in that they adopted the same general conception of
the novel, but that they succeeded in working out that conception and
in bringing their characters, or some of them, under the _species
œternitatis_. An Englishman naturally speaks with some caution
about Fielding, because he himself is not in so good a position as
foreigners to judge how far Fielding has accomplished this.
Englishmen, however, are the best possible judges of Lesage, because
they are equally free from bias connected with the language in which
he writes and from bias connected with the country which he
illustrates.
There is one important and intricate question which can hardly be
passed over, though here, at least, it can only be very summarily
dealt with. It has been said that until the present century no
French writer, except Montaigne and Rabelais deserves the title of
humorist, and this would, of course, exclude Lesage. On the other
hand, the exclusion has been objected to in the interest of some
mediæval writers. The truth is, that the whole question turns on one
of the most disputed points in literature--the definition of humour.
If, as it has been admirably put, the humorist is a man who "thinks
in jest when he feels in earnest;" or if, as Thackeray puts it, he is
a weekday preacher, then Lesage most assuredly is not one. For not
only has he no direct moral purpose, which, indeed, is oftener than
not fatal to humour, but it is difficult to discern that he has, as
Rabelais, Montaigne, and Shakspeare had, any general theory or grasp
of the world or of life, whether poetical, ironical, or sceptical,
which could supply him with the necessary background for humour.
Neither had he, like Fielding and Thackeray himself, a passionate
interest in that world--a sympathy with it which, in its way, is also
sufficient to bring out the strokes of the strange invisible ink
called humour. It would seem, therefore, that his exclusion is
justified, and as he shares it with Molière, and even with
Lafontaine, he need not be ashamed of his company. Like these still
greater men, however, he had a wit so fine, so flexible, so far
transcending the ordinary limitations of wit, that it almost amounted
to humour, and may be said to be practically a substitute for it.
This brings us to the consideration of a point of very great
importance--the style of Lesage. In all such cases the modern reader
who merely looks back is very likely to be deceived by his point of
view. Yet even the modern reader, if he has but some notion of the
date of his author, must, I should think, be conscious of a singular
modernness in _Gil Blas_ and the _Diable Boiteux_ compared with
Bossuet, Fénelon, even Malebranche, and still more with Madame de
Sévigné and Saint-Simon. Lesage, indeed, was one of a line of great
writers chiefly of the lighter kind, who, perhaps, did most of any of
their contemporaries to shape French style, as it has been generally
understood until recently. Saint-Evremond and Pascal are the
earliest of these, and Lesage, taking up the torch, handed it on to
Voltaire. It is noteworthy that Voltaire, perhaps on the principle
of kicking down his ladders, was unjust both to Saint-Evremond and to
Lesage, though, as has been said, the latter had certainly provoked
him. The great distinction of Lesage is the extreme ease of his
writing and the manner in which his good things, such as those
already cited above, drop naturally out in the midst of his narrative
or dialogue, without any effort or apparent leading up. It would
demand a much greater acquaintance with Spanish literature than any
to which I, even at second-hand, can pretend, to decide whether his
studies had anything to do with this; but I think that it may be
tolerably safely assumed that they had not, except by way of
contrast; for many, if not most, of the works which Lesage translated
or followed were written in the extremest _gongorist_ or conceited
style--a style as remote from his as Lyly's from Steele's. It may
possibly be contended that it was in fighting against this excess
that Lesage learnt the secret of a wise economy. Certainly, there
are not merely few writers in whom there is so little archaism,
affectation, mannerism, or deliberate oddity and obscurity, but also
few in whom the style is so absolutely plain and unadorned, without
being in the least vulgar, or, in the unfavourable sense, homely.
His autobiographies, probably owing to this, have, more than most
autobiographies, the air of being really told by a speaker and not
elaborated in the study. There are no ponderous sentences, no
phrases over which the reader sees that the pen has hung a long time,
and, as has been already noted, none of the leading-up and
preparation which certain witty writers are unable to avoid or to
conceal. The most commonplace things are said with perfect
simplicity, and yet, somehow or other, in a way on which it is
impossible to improve. It must be a bold man who thinks he can
better a saying of Lesage's, and that not because of any _tour de
force_ of unusual phrase or out-of-the-way thought, but, on the
contrary, because the simplicity has reached the lowest term.
Nothing can be taken away, and nothing can be added that is not a
useless addition.
The question of his alleged plagiarisms has been already, to some
extent, dealt with. It has been shown, that is to say, that in the
way of absolute stealing the charge has not the slightest
probability. The strongest argument of all is, indeed, that when we
see what he did with originals which we possess, such as _Guzman
d'Alfarache_ and the _Diablo Cojuelo_, there could be no motive for
discreditable appropriation in other cases. But, when the charge in
its offensive sense has been laid aside, it remains to consider the
use which he did make of _publica materies_. There can be no doubt
that, as was the case with Shakspeare and Molière and many other men
of the very greatest genius, he made wholesale and indiscriminate use
thereof. There is proof of this in many cases; there is probability
of it in many more. Indeed, there is in this and other instances
almost ground for the paradox that it is only men of little creative
power who are scrupulously original. Many very small poets, by luck
or by care, have kept free from the charge of indebtedness to
anybody, while Shakspeare calmly versifies whole pages of North's
"Plutarch;" while Molière compels restitution of his goods from the
unlucky people who happened to possess them first without the least
scruple; while Milton lays Dutch dramatists and French epic poets and
Italian opera librettists under contribution as coolly as if they had
been Royalist squires. In Lesage's case there is, however, something
more than this. In the three great cases just mentioned, and in many
others, it is only now and then that the borrowers condescend to
borrow; it is a passing freak, or, to speak more respectfully and
with more critical truth, an occasional conviction that here are the
tools of which they themselves can make the best use. But there are
some men, and those not among the least in literature, who, from a
certain idiosyncrasy, which may, perhaps, be termed an indolence of
brain, have seemed to prefer always, when it was possible, to work on
beaten tracks and to take their start from some already-accomplished
work. The most remarkable example of this variety of talent in
English literature is Dryden; the most remarkable in French
literature is beyond all question Lesage. Yet Lesage must in respect
of absolute originality be ranked below Dryden, because his greatest
work, though its substance may be independent enough, springs in
point of general design directly from Spanish originals, while the
greatest work of Dryden, his satiric and didactic pieces, was not
directly suggested by anything precedent. It may be said, indeed,
that, of the four productions which we have singled out as exhibiting
Lesage at his best, the two dramas are far more original than the two
novels. Whether Lesage, had he been more favoured by the exponents
of the regular drama and had he devoted himself longer thereto, would
have produced something even more original than _Crispin_ and
_Turcaret_ must be left among the merely scholastic problems of
literature, the "might-have-beens" inquiry into which is bootless and
idle. The time, however, had not come for any innovation on the set
lines of French comedy and tragedy, even had the author been disposed
for such innovation, and it is noteworthy enough that, when in his
specially-chosen province of the _Théâtre de la Foire_ an opportunity
appeared for a bold stroke, he declined it. On one occasion the
jealousy of the regular actors had procured a police edict
restricting their rivals to a single personage. The managers of the
fair stage were in despair, for neither Lesage nor any of their other
regular contributors would attempt the task of a monodrama, and
recourse had to be had to the untried and fitful but fertile genius
of Piron, whose _Arlequin Deucalion_ got them out of the difficulty.
This anecdote seems to argue a certain indisposition to try
experiments which is consistent enough with what we have of Lesage's
work. It must be remembered, too, that he did not begin literary
labour very young, and that he did not make any great success in it
until he was already a man of middle age. There are not wanting
examples of striking originality in conception as well as striking
power of execution displayed by late-writing authors. But on the
whole it may, perhaps, be safely said that invention is a habit as
much as any other, and that it is a habit which is for the most part
only acquired in youth.
Such are the principal critical points which present themselves in
the life of this great novelist and master of French prose. As one
turns over the leaves of a library catalogue and sees the immense
number of editions, translations, and what not, that _Gil Blas_ has
gone through and undergone in its century-and-a-half of life, it is
impossible not to draw the conclusion that its goodness is a matter
settled and out of hand. One generation may make egregious mistakes,
and constantly does make egregious mistakes, about an author, leaving
him to unjust neglect, or awarding to him still more absurd triumphs.
Subsequent generations may, in a way, continue the mistake by leaving
the justice of the verdict, for or against, undisturbed, because the
evidence is undisturbed likewise. But when a book has actually been
read by half-a-dozen successive sets of the inhabitants of the earth,
when its most remarkable incidents and characters have become part of
the common stock of furniture possessed even by a very modest
housekeeper in things literary, then there is not much reason for
questioning the value. The works, even the best works, of Lesage
are, of course, not good throughout. Even in _Le Diable Boiteux_,
despite its moderate length, there are _longueurs_, and there are
most assuredly _longueurs_ in _Gil Blas_. Some of it is obsolete,
some could be well spared now, some, it is difficult not to think,
could have been well spared at any time. But its best things are as
fresh as ever and are likely to continue so as long as human nature
exists. The opening chapters, the address to the reader--Lesage was
never happier than his addresses to the reader, prefaces, and such
like things--the episodes of Sangrado and the Archbishop, half a
hundred things beside, are as amusing to read for the twentieth time
as for the first. What is, perhaps, of more importance, the same may
be said of the best passages, even in the work which has been less
favoured by the general approbation. But at the same time no one who
weighs his words will attempt to deny that Lesage has produced a
considerable amount of inferior work side by side with his
masterpieces. Nor can it be denied that, as has been more than once
here allowed, his range is but limited and that he seems to require a
somewhat unusual amount of prompting and crutching before he is able
to make his bow and say his say. These things debar him from the
place among the chosen few of the writers of his country to which the
wonderful success of his best work and the purity of his style would
otherwise entitle him. In theoretical originality, in variety of
work, in construction, he is very deficient. _Gil Blas_ drags rather
than hastens to its end, the author having failed completely to
extricate himself from the toils of the endless episodes and
digressions of his Spanish models. _Turcaret_ in the same manner
lacks unity and precision of plot. Excellence of style and
surprising fidelity to human nature in character-drawing--these are
the two pillars of Lesage's renown, and it is solidly established
upon them. He is thus one of the few writers, to return to the point
from which we started, of whom it can be definitely said that, if he
had been in more fortunate worldly circumstances, he would have done
better, unless, which is, perhaps, equally probable, he had done
nothing at all. Necessity was with him, as with others, the mother
of invention--the invention, that is to say, of his own talent. But
with gifts which do not fall to the lot of one writer in a thousand,
he did not always or very often succeed in getting those gifts into
perfect working order. His selection of foreign subjects, and the
very natural, though very unjust, suspicion of grave indebtedness to
foreign models, have also worked against his fame. Yet, with those
who have considered novel-writing seriously, he will always rank as
one of the princes of character-drawing in its largest and most human
sense, while with those who busy themselves with the history of
French literature he will always hold the rank of the best writer of
the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
HISTORY OF GIL BLAS OF SANTILLANE.
BOOK THE FIRST.
_CHAPTER I._
_THE BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF GIL BLAS._
My father, Blas of Santillane, after having borne arms for a long
time in the Spanish service, retired to his native place. There he
married a chambermaid who was not exactly in her teens, and I made my
debut on this stage ten months after marriage. They afterwards went
to live at Ovieda, where my mother got into service, and my father
obtained a situation equally adapted to his capacities as a squire.
As their wages were their fortune, I might have got my education as I
could, had it not been for an uncle of mine in the town, a canon, by
name Gil Perez. He was my mother's eldest brother, and my godfather.
Figure to yourself a little fellow, three feet and a half high, as
fat as you can conceive, with a head sunk deep between his shoulders,
and you have my uncle to the life. For the rest of his qualities, he
was an ecclesiastic, and of course thought of nothing but good
living, I mean in the flesh as well as in the spirit, with the means
of which good living his stall, no lean one, provided him.
He took me home to his own house from my infancy, and ran the risk of
my bringing up. I struck him as so brisk a lad, that he resolved to
cultivate my talents. He bought me a primer, and undertook my
tuition as far as reading went: which was not amiss for himself as
well as for me; since by teaching me my letters he brushed up his own
learning, which had not been pursued in a very scholastic manner;
and, by dint of application, he got at last to read his breviary out
of hand, which he had never been able to do before. He would have
been very glad to have taught me Latin, to save expense, but, alas!
poor Gil Perez! he had never skimmed the first principles of it in
the whole course of his life. I should not wonder if he was the most
ignorant member of the chapter; though on a subject involving as many
possibilities as there were canons, I presume not to pledge myself
for anything like certainty. To be sure, I have heard it suggested,
that he did not gain his preferment altogether by his learning: but
that he owed it exclusively to the gratitude of some good nuns whose
discreet factor he had been, and who had credit enough to procure him
the order of priesthood without the troublesome ceremony of an
examination.
He was obliged therefore to place me under the correction of a
master, so that I was sent to Doctor Godinez, who had the reputation
of being the most accomplished pedant of Oviedo. I profited so well
under his instructions, that by the end of five or six years I could
read a Greek author or two, and had no very inadequate conception of
the Latin poets. Besides my classical studies, I applied to logic,
which enabled me to become an expert arguer. I now fell in love with
discussions of all kinds to such an excess, that I stopped his
majesty's subjects on the high road, acquaintance or strangers, no
matter! and proposed some knotty point of controversy. Sometimes I
fell in with a clan of Irish, and an altercation never comes amiss to
them! That was your time, if you are fond of a battle. Such
gestures! such grimaces! such contortions! Our eyes sparkling, and
our mouths foaming! Those who did not take us for what we affected
to be, philosophers, must have set us down for madmen.
But let that be as it will, I gained the reputation of no small
learning in the town. My uncle was delighted, because he prudently
considered that I should so much the sooner cease to be chargeable to
him. Come here, Gil Blas, quoth he one day, you are got to be a fine
fellow. You are past seventeen, and a clever lad: you must bestir
yourself, and get forward in the world. I think of sending you to
the University of Salamanca: with your wit, you will easily get a
good post. I will give you a few ducats for your journey, and my
mule, which will fetch ten or twelve pistoles at Salamanca, and with
such a sum at setting out, you will be enabled to hold up your head
till you get a situation.
He could not have proposed to me anything more agreeable: for I was
dying to see a little of life. At the same time, I was not such a
fool as to betray my satisfaction; and when it came to the hour of
parting, by the sensibility I discovered at taking leave of my dear
uncle, to whom I was so much obliged, and by calling in the stage
effect of grief, I so softened the good soul, that he put his hand
deeper into his pocket than he would have done, could he have pried
into all that was passing in the interior of my hypocritical little
heart. Before my departure I took a last leave of my papa and mamma,
who loaded me with an ample inheritance of good advice. They
enjoined me to pray to God for my uncle, to go honestly through the
world, not to engage in any ill, and above all, not to lay my hands
on other people's property. After they had lectured me for a good
while, they made me a present of their blessing, which was all my
patrimony and all my expectation. As soon as I had received it, I
mounted my mule, and saw the outside of the town.
_CHAPTER II._
_GIL BLAS' ALARM ON HIS ROAD TO PEGNAFLOR; HIS ADVENTURES ON HIS
ARRIVAL IN THAT TOWN; AND THE CHARACTER OF THE MEN WITH WHOM HE
SUPPED._
Here I am, then, on the other side of Oviedo, on the road to
Pegnaflor, with the world before me, as yet my own master, as well as
master of a bad mule and forty good ducats, without reckoning on a
little supplementary cash purloined from my much-honored uncle. The
first thing I did was to let my mule go as the beast liked, that is
to say, very lazily. I dropped the rein, and taking out my ducats,
began to count them backwards and forwards in my hat. I was out of
my wits for joy, never having seen such a sum of money before, and
could not help looking at it and sifting it through my fingers. I
had counted it over about the twentieth time, when all at once my
mule, with head raised and ears pricked up, stood stock still in the
middle of the high road. I thought to be sure something was the
matter; looked about for a cause, and perceiving a hat upon the
ground, with a rosary of large beads, at the same time heard a
lugubrious voice pronounce these words: Pray, honored master, have
pity on a poor maimed soldier! Please to throw a few small pieces
into this hat; you shall be rewarded for it in the other world. I
looked immediately on the side whence the voice proceeded; and saw
just by a thicket, twenty or thirty paces from me, a sort of a
soldier, who had mounted the barrel of a confounded long carbine on
two cross sticks, and seemed to be taking aim at me. At a sight
which made me tremble for the patrimony of the church committed to my
care, I stopped short, made sure of my ducats, and taking out a
little small change, as I rode by the hat, placed to receive the
charity of those quiet subjects who had not the courage to refuse it,
dropped in my contribution in detail, to convince the soldier how
nobly I dealt by him. He was satisfied with my liberality, and gave
me a blessing for every kick I gave my mule in my impatience to get
out of his way; but the infernal beast, without partaking in the
slightest degree of my impatience, went at the old steady pace. A
long custom of jogging on fair and softly under my uncle's weight had
obliterated every idea of that motion called a gallop.
The prospect of my journey was not much improved by this adventure as
a specimen. I considered within myself that I had yet some distance
to Salamanca, and might, not improbably, meet with something worse.
My uncle seemed to have been very imprudent not to have consigned me
to the care of a muleteer. That, to be sure, was what he ought to
have done; but his notion was, that by giving me his mule my journey
would be cheaper; and that entered more into his calculation than the
dangers in which I might be involved on the road. To retrieve his
error, therefore, I resolved, if I had the good luck to arrive safe
at Pegnaflor, to offer my mule for sale, and take the opportunity of
a muleteer going to Astorga, whence I might get to Salamanca by a
similar conveyance. Though I had never been out of Oviedo, I was
acquainted with the names of the towns through which I was to pass; a
species of information I took care to procure before my setting out.
I got safe and sound to Pegnaflor, and stopped at the door of a very
decent-looking inn. My foot was scarcely out of the stirrup before
the landlord was at my side, overwhelming me with public-house
civility. He untied my cloak-bag with his own hands, swung it across
his shoulders, and ushered my honor into a room, while one of his men
led my mule to the stable. This landlord, the most busy prattler of
the Asturias, ready to bother you impertinently about his own
concerns, and at the same time with a sufficient portion of curiosity
to worm himself into the knowledge of yours, was not long in telling
me that his name was Andrew Corcuelo; that he had seen some service
as a sergeant in the army, which he had quitted fifteen months ago,
and married a girl of Castropol, who, though a little tawny or so,
knew how to make both ends meet as well as the best of them. He told
me a thousand things besides which he might just as well have kept
private. Thinking himself entitled, after this voluntary confidence,
to an equal share of mine, he asked me in a breath, and without
further preface, whence I came, whither I was going, and who I was.
To all this I felt myself bound to answer, article by article,
because, though rather abrupt in asking them, he accompanied each
question with so apologetic a bow, beseeching me with so submissive a
grimace not to be offended at his curiosity, that I was drawn in to
gratify it, whether I would or no. Thus by degrees did we get into a
long conversation, in the course of which I took occasion to hint,
that I had some reasons for wishing to get rid of my mule, and travel
under convoy of a muleteer. He seemed on the whole to approve of my
plan, though he could not prevail with himself to tell me so briefly;
for he introduced his remarks by descanting on all the possible and
probable mischances to which travellers are liable on the road, not
omitting an awkward story now and then. I thought the fellow would
never have done. But the conclusion of the argument was, that if I
wanted to sell my mule, he knew an honest jockey who would take it
off my hands. I begged he would do me the favor to fetch him, which
was no sooner said than done.
On his return he introduced the purchaser, with a high encomium on
his integrity. We all three went into the yard, and the mule was
brought out to show paces before the jockey, who set himself to
examine the beast from head to foot. His report was bad enough. To
be sure, it would not have been easy to make a good one; but if it
had been the pope's mule, and this fellow was to cheapen the bargain,
it would have been just the same: nay, to speak with all due
reverence, if he had been asked to give an opinion of the pope's
great toe, from that disparaging habit of his, he would have
pronounced it no better than the toe of any ordinary man. He laid it
down therefore, as a principle, that the mule had all the defects a
mule could have; appealing to the landlord for a confirmation of his
judgment, who, doubtless, had reasons of his own for not
controverting his friend's assertion. Well! says the jockey, with an
air of indifference, what price have you the conscience to ask for
this devil of an animal? After such a panegyric, and master
Corcuelo's certificate, whom I was fool enough to take for a
fair-dealing man and a good judge of horseflesh, they might have had
the mule for nothing. I therefore told the dealer that I threw
myself on his mercy: he must fix his own sum, and I should expect no
more. On this, he began to affect the gentleman, and answered that I
had found out the weak side when I left it to his honor. He was
right enough in that! His honor was his weak side! for instead of
bidding up to my uncle's estimate of ten or twelve pistoles, the
rascal had the impudence to offer three ducats, which I accepted with
as light a heart as if I had got the best of the bargain.
Having disencumbered myself of my mule in so tradesmanlike a manner,
I went with my landlord to a carrier who was to set out early the
next morning for Astorga, and engaged to call me up in time. When we
had settled the hire of the mule, as well as the expenses on the
road, I turned back towards the inn with Corcuelo, who, as we went
along, got into the private history of this muleteer. When I had
been pestered with all the tittle-tattle of the town about this
fellow, the changes were just beginning to ring on some new subject;
but, by good luck, a pretty-looking sort of a man very civilly
interrupted my loquacious friend. I left them together, and
sauntered on, without the slightest suspicion of being at all
concerned in their discourse.
I ordered supper as soon as I got to the inn. It was a fish day: but
I thought eggs were better suited to my finances. While they were
getting ready I joined in conversation with the landlady, whom I had
not seen before. She seemed a pretty piece of goods enough, and such
a stirring body, that I should have concluded, if her husband had not
told me so, her tavern must have plenty of custom. The moment the
omelet was served up, I sat down to table by myself, and had scarcely
got the relish of it, when my landlord walked in, followed by the man
who had stopped him in the street. This pleasant gentleman wore a
long rapier, and might, perhaps, be about thirty years of age. He
came up to me in the most friendly manner possible. Mr. Professor,
says he, I have just now heard that you are the renowned Gil Blas of
Santillane, that ornament of Oviedo and luminary of philosophy. And
do my eyes behold that very greatest of all great scholars and wits,
whose reputation has run hither so fast before him! Little do you
think, continues he, directing his discourse to the landlord and
landlady, little do you imagine, I say, what good luck has befallen
you. Why, you have got hold of a treasure. In this young gentleman
you behold the eighth wonder of the world. Then running up and
throwing his arms about my neck, Excuse me, added he; but worlds
would not bribe me to suppress the rapturous emotions your honored
presence has excited.
I could not answer him so glibly as I wished, not so much for want of
words as of breath; for he hugged me so tight that I began to be
alarmed for my wind-pipe. As soon, however, as I had got my head out
of durance, I replied, Signor cavalier, I had not the least
conception that my name was known at Pegnaflor. Known? resumed he in
the same pompous style; we keep a register of all great persons
within a circuit of twenty leagues round us. You have the character
of a prodigy here; and I have not a shadow of doubt, but one day or
other Spain will be as proud of numbering you among her rare
productions, as Greece of having given birth to her seven wise men.
This fine speech was followed as before; and I really began to think
that with all my classical honors I should at last be doomed to share
the fate of Antaeus. If I had been master of ever so little
experience, I should not have been the dupe of his rhodomontade. I
must have discovered him, by his outrageous compliments, to be one of
those parasites who swarm in every town, and get into a stranger's
company on his arrival, to appease the wolf in their stomachs at his
expense; but my youth and vanity tempted me to draw a quite opposite
conclusion. My admirer was very clever in my eyes, and I asked him
to supper on the strength of it. Oh! most willingly, cried he: with
all my heart and soul. My fortunate star predominates, now that I
have the honor of being in company with the illustrious Gil Blas of
Santillane, and I shall certainly make the most of my good fortune as
long as it lasts. My appetite is rather delicate, but I will just
sit down with you by way of being sociable, and if I can swallow a
bit! only just not to look for we philosophers are careless of the
body.
These words were no sooner out of his mouth, than my panegyrist took
his seat opposite to me. A cover was laid for him in due form and
order. First he fell on the omelet with as much perseverance as if
he had not tasted food for three whole days. By the complacency with
which he eyed it I was morally certain the poor pancake was at
death's door. I therefore ordered its heir apparent to succeed; and
the business was despatched with such speed, that the second made its
appearance on the table, just as we;--no:--I beg pardon;--just as he
had taken the last lick of its predecessor. He pressed forward the
main business, however, with a diligence and activity proportioned to
the importance of the object he had in view: so that he contrived to
load me with panegyric on panegyric, without losing a single stroke
in the progress of mastication. Now all this gave me no slender
conceit of my pretty little self. When a man eats, he must drink.
The first toast of course was my health. The second, in common
civility, was my father and mother, whose happiness in having such an
angel of a son, he could not sufficiently envy or admire. All this
while he kept filling my glass, and challenging me to keep pace with
him. It was impossible to be backward in doing justice to such
excellent toasts and sentiments: the compliments with which they were
seasoned did not come amiss; so that I got into such a convivial
mood, at observing our second omelet to disappear not insensibly, as
just to ask the landlord if he could not find us a little bit of
fish. Master Corcuelo, who to all appearance played booty with the
parasite, told me he had an excellent trout; but those who eat him
must pay for him. I am afraid he is meat for your masters. Meat for
our masters! exclaims my very humble servant in an angry tone of
voice: that is more than you know, my friend. Are you yet to learn
that the best of your larder is not too good for the renowned Gil
Blas of Santillane? Go where he will, he is fit to table with
princes.
I was very glad that he took up the landlord's last expression;
because if he had not, I should. I felt myself a little hurt at it,
and said to Corcuelo with some degree of hauteur: Produce this trout
of yours, and I will take the consequences. The landlord, who had
got just what he wanted, set himself to work, and served it up in
high order. At the first glance of this third course I saw such
pleasure sparkling in the parasite's eyes, as to prove him to be of a
very complying temper; just as ready to do a kindness by the fish, as
by those said eggs of which he had given so good an account. But at
last he was obliged to lay down his arms, for fear of accidents; as
his magazine was crammed to the very throat. Having eaten and drank
his fill, he bethought him of putting a finishing hand to the farce.
Master Gil Blas, said he, as he rose from the table, I am too well
pleased with my princely entertainment, to leave you without a word
of advice, of which you seem to stand in much need. From this time
forward be on your guard against extravagant praise. Do not trust
men till you know them. You may meet with many another man, who,
like me, may amuse himself at your expense, and perhaps carry the
joke a little further. But do not you be taken in a second time, to
believe yourself, on the word of such fellows, the eighth wonder of
the world. With this sting in the tail of his farewell speech he
very coolly took his leave.
I was as much alive to so ridiculous a circumstance, as I have ever
been in after-life to the most severe mortifications. I did not know
how to reconcile myself to the idea of having been so egregiously
taken in, or, in fact, to lowering of my pride. So, so! quoth I,
this rascal has been putting his tricks upon travellers, has he?
Then he only wanted to pump my landlord! or more likely they were
both in a story. Ah! my poor Gil Blas, thou hadst better hide thy
silly head! To have suffered such knaves as these to turn thee into
ridicule! A pretty story they will make of this! It is sure to
travel back to Oviedo: and will give our friends a hopeful prospect
of thy success in life. The family will be quite delighted to think
what a blessed harvest all their pious advice has produced. There
was no occasion to preach up morals to thee; for verily thou hast
more of the dupe than the sharper in thy composition. Ready to tear
my eyes out or bite my fingers off from spite and vexation, I locked
myself up in my chamber and went to bed, but not to sleep; of which I
had not got a wink when the muleteer came to tell me, that he only
waited for me to set out on his journey. I got up as expeditiously
as I could; and while I was dressing Corcuelo put in his appearance,
with a little bill in his hand;--a slight memorandum of the trout!
But paying through the nose was not the worst of it; for I had the
vexation to perceive, that while I was counting over the cost, this
hang-dog was chuckling at the recollection of the night before.
Having been fleeced most shamefully for a supper, which stuck in my
stomach though I had scarcely come in for a morsel of it, I joined
the muleteer with my baggage, giving to as many devils as there are
saints in the calendar, the parasite, the landlord, and the inn.
_CHAPTER III._
_THE MULETEER'S TEMPTATION ON THE ROAD; ITS CONSEQUENCES, AND THE
SITUATION OF GIL BLAS BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS._
I was not the only passenger. There were two young gentlemen of
Pegnaflor; a little chorister of Mondognedo, who was travelling about
the country, and a young tradesman of Astorga, returning home from
Verco with his new-married wife. We soon got acquainted, and
exchanged the usual confidence of travellers, telling one another
whence we came and whither we were going. The bride was young
enough; but so dark-complexioned, with so little of what a man likes
to look at in a woman, that I did not think her worth the trouble.
But she had youth and a good crummy person on her side, and the
muleteer, being rather less nice in his taste, was resolved to try if
he could not get into her good graces. This pretty project occupied
his ingenuity during the whole day; but he deferred the execution
till we should get to Cacabelos, the last place where we were to stop
on the road. We alighted at an inn in the outskirts of the town, a
quiet convenient place, with a landlord who never troubled himself
about other people's concerns. We were ushered into a private room,
and got our supper snugly; but just as the cloth was taken away in
comes our carrier in a furious passion:--Death and the devil! I have
been robbed. Here had I a hundred pistoles in my purse! But I will
have them back again. I am going for a magistrate;--and those gentry
will not take a joke upon such serious subjects. You will all be put
to the rack, unless you confess, and give back the money. The fellow
played his part very naturally, and burst out of the room, leaving us
in a terrible fright.
We had none of us the least suspicion of the trick, and, being all
strangers, were afraid of one another. I looked askance at the
little chorister, and he, perhaps, had no better opinion of me.
Besides, we were all a pack of greenhorns, and were quite
unacquainted with the routine of business on these occasions. We
were fools enough to believe that the torture would be the very first
stage of our examination. With this dread upon our spirits, we all
made for the door. Some effected their escape into the street,
others into the garden; but the whole party preferred the discretion
of running away to the valor of standing their ground. The young
tradesman of Astorga had as great an objection to bone-twisting as
the rest of us: so he did as Eneas, and many another good husband has
done before him;--ran away, and left his wife behind. At that
critical moment the muleteer, as I was told afterwards, who had not
half so much sense of decency as his own mules, delighted at the
success of his stratagem, began moving his motives to the citizen's
wife: but this Lucrece of the Asturias, borrowing the chastity of a
saint from the ugliness of the devil who tempted her, defended her
sweet person tooth and nail; and showed she was in earnest about it
by the noise she made. The patrol, who happened to be passing by the
inn at the time, and knew that the neighborhood required a little
looking after, took the liberty of just asking the cause of the
disturbance. The landlord, who was trying if he could not sing in
the kitchen louder than she could scream in the parlor, and swore he
heard no music but his own, was at last obliged to introduce the
myrmidons of the police to the distressed lady, just in time to
rescue her from the necessity of a surrender at discretion. The head
officer, a coarse fellow, without an atom of feeling for the tender
passion, no sooner saw the game that was playing, than he gave the
amorous muleteer five or six blows with the butt end of his halberd,
representing to him the indecency of his conduct in terms quite as
offensive to modesty as the naughty propensity which had called forth
his virtuous indignation. Neither did he stop here; but laid hold of
the culprit, and carried plaintiff and defendant before the
magistrate. The former, with her charms all heightened by the
discomposure of her dress, went eagerly to try their effect in
obtaining justice for the outrage they had sustained. His worship
heard at least one party; and after solemn deliberation pronounced
the offence to be of a most heinous nature. He ordered him to be
stripped, and to receive a competent number of lashes in his
presence. The conclusion of the sentence was, that if the Endymion
of Asturian Diana was not forthcoming the next day, a couple of
guards should escort the disconsolate goddess to the town of Astorga,
at the expense of this mule-driving Acteon.
For my part, being probably more terrified than the rest of the
party, I got into the fields, scampering over hedge and ditch,
through enclosures and across commons, till I found myself hard by a
forest. I was just going for concealment to ensconce myself in the
very heart of the thicket, when two men on horseback rode across me,
crying, Who goes there? As my alarm prevented me from giving them an
immediate answer, they came to close quarters, and holding each of
them a pistol to my throat, required me to give an account of myself;
who I was, whence I came, what business I had in that forest, and
above all, not to tell a lie about it. Their rough interrogatives
were, according to my notion, little better than the rack with which
our friend the muleteer had offered to treat us. I represented
myself, however, as a young man on my way from Oviedo to Salamanca;
told the story of our late fright, and faithfully attributed my
running away in such a hurry to the dread of a worse exercise under
the torture. They burst into an immoderate fit of laughter at my
simplicity; and one of them said: Take heart, my little friend; come
along with us, and do not be afraid; we will put you in a place where
the devil shall not find you. At these words he took me up behind
him, and we darted into the forest.
I did not know what to think of this odd meeting; yet on the whole I
could not well be worse off than before. If these gentry, thought I
to myself, had been thieves, they would have robbed, and perhaps
murdered me. Depend on it, they are a couple of good honest country
gentlemen in this neighborhood, who seeing me frightened, have taken
compassion on me, and mean to carry me home with them and make me
comfortable. But these visions did not last long. After turning and
winding backward and forward in deep silence, we found ourselves at
the foot of a hill, where we dismounted. This is our abode, said one
of these sequestered gentlemen. I looked about in all directions,
but the deuce a bit of either house or cottage: not a vestige of
human habitation! The two men in the mean time raised a great wooden
trap, covered with earth and briers, to conceal the entrance of a
long shelving passage under ground, to which from habit the poor
beasts took very kindly of their own accord. Their masters kept
tight hold of me, and let the trap down after them. Thus was the
worthy nephew of my uncle Perez caught, just for all the world as you
would catch a rat.
_CHAPTER IV._
_DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBTERRANEOUS DWELLING AND ITS CONTENTS._
I now knew into what company I had fallen; and I leave it to any one
to judge whether the discovery must not have rid me of my former
fear. A dread more mighty and more just now seized my faculties.
Money and life, all given up for lost! With the air of a victim on
his passage to the altar, did I walk, more dead than alive, between
my two conductors, who finding that I trembled, frightened me so much
the more by telling me not to be afraid. When we had gone two
hundred paces, winding down a declivity all the way, we got into a
stable lighted by two large iron lamps suspended from the vault
above. There was a good store of straw, and several casks of hay and
corn with room enough for twenty horses: but at that time there were
only the two which came with us. An old negro, who seemed for his
years in pretty good case, was tying them to the rack where they were
to feed.
[Illustration: Thieves' Cave]
We went out of the stable. By the melancholy light of some other
lamps, which only served to dress up horror in its native colors, we
arrived at a kitchen where an old harridan was broiling some steaks
on the coals, and getting supper ready. The kitchen furniture was
better than might be expected, and the pantry provided in a very
plentiful manner. The lady of the larder's picture is worth drawing.
Considerably on the wrong side of sixty!--In her youth, her hair had
been of a fiery red; though she would have called it auburn. Time
had indeed given it the fairer tint of gray; but a lock of more
youthful hue, interspersed at intervals, produced all the variegated
effect of the admired autumnal shades. To say nothing of an olive
complexion, she had an enormous chin turning up, an immense nose
turning down, with a mouth in the middle, modestly retiring inwards,
to make room for its encroaching neighbors. Red eyes are no beauty
in any animal but a ferret;--hers were purple.
Here, dame Leonarda, said one of the horsemen as he presented me to
this angelic imp of darkness, we have brought you a young lad. Then
looking round, and observing me to be miserably pale, Pluck up your
spirits, my friend; you shall come to no harm. We want a scullion,
and have met with you. You are a lucky dog! We had a boy who died
about a fortnight ago: you shall succeed to the preferment. He was
rather too delicate for his place. You seem a good stout fellow, and
may live a week or two longer. We find you in bed and board, coal
and candle; but as for day-light, you will never see that again.
Your leisure hours will pass off very agreeably with Leonarda, who is
really a very good creature, and tolerably tender-hearted; you will
have all your little comforts about you. I flatter myself you have
not got among beggars. At this moment, the thief seized a flambeau;
and as I feared, "with zeal to destroy;" for he ordered me to follow
him.
He took me into a cellar, where I saw a great number of bottles and
earthen pots full of excellent wine. He then made me cross several
rooms. In some were pieces of cloth piled up; in others, stuffs and
silks. As we passed through I could not help casting a sheep's eye
at the gold and silver plate peeping out of the different cupboards.
After that, I followed him into a great hall illuminated by three
copper lustres, and serving as a gallery between the other rooms.
Here he put fresh questions to me; asking my name;--why I left
Oviedo;--and when I had satisfied his curiosity: Well, Gil Blas, said
he, since your only motive for quitting your native place was to get
into something snug and eligible, to be sure you must have been born
to good luck, or you would not have fallen into our hands. I tell
you once for all, you will live here on the fat of the land, and may
souse over head and ears in ready money. Besides, you are in a place
of perfect safety. The officers of the holy brotherhood might pass
through the forest a hundred times without discovering our
subterraneous abode. The entrance is only known to myself and my
comrades. You may perhaps ask how it came to be contrived, without
being perceived by the inhabitants in the neighborhood. But you are
to understand, my friend, that it was made long ago, and is no work
of ours. After the Moors had made themselves masters of Granada, of
Arragon, and nearly the whole of Spain, the Christians, rather than
submit to the tyranny of infidels, betook themselves to flight, and
lay concealed in this country, in Biscay, and in the Asturias,
whither the brave Don Pelagio had withdrawn himself. They lived in a
state of exile, on the mountains, or in the woods dispersed in little
knots. Some took up their residences in natural caves, others in
artificial dwellings under ground, like this we are in. In process
of time, when by the blessing of Providence they had driven their
enemies out of Spain, they returned to the towns. From that time
forth their retreats have served as a rendezvous for the gentlemen of
our profession. It is true that several of them have been discovered
and destroyed by the holy brotherhood: but there are some yet
remaining; and, by great good luck, I have tenanted this without
paying any rent for it almost these fifteen years: Captain Rolando,
at your service! I am the leader of the band; and the man you saw
with me is one of my troopers.
_CHAPTER V._
_THE ARRIVAL OF THE BANDITTI IN THE SUBTERRANEOUS RETREAT, WITH AN
ACCOUNT OF THEIR PLEASANT CONVERSATION._
Just as Captain Rolando had finished his speech six new faces made
their appearance in the hall; the lieutenant and five privates,
returning home with their booty. They were hauling in two great
baskets full of sugar, cinnamon, pepper, figs, almonds, and raisins.
The lieutenant gave an account of their proceedings to the captain,
and told him they had taken these articles, as well as the
sumpter-mule, from a grocer of Benavento. An official report having
thus been made to the prime-minister, the grocer's contribution was
carried to account; and the next step was to regale after their
labors. A large table was set out in the hall. They sent me back to
the kitchen, where dame Leonarda told me what I had to do. I made
the best of a bad bargain, finding the luck ran against me; and,
swallowing my grievances, set myself to wait on my noble masters.
I cleaned my plate, set out my side-board, and brought up my wine.
As soon as I announced dinner to be on table, consisting of two good
black peppery ragouts for the first course, this high and mighty
company took their seats. They fell to most voraciously. My place
was to wait; and I handed about the glasses with so butler-like an
air, as to be not a little complimented on my dexterity. The chief
entertained them with a short sketch of my story, and praised my
parts. But I had recovered from my mania by this time, and could
listen to my own panegyric with the humility of an anchorite or the
contempt of a philosopher. They all seemed to take a liking to me,
and to think I had dropped from the clouds on purpose to be their
cup-bearer. My predecessor was a fool to me. Since his death, the
illustrious Leonarda had the honor of presenting nectar to these gods
of the lower regions. But she was now degraded, and I had the
felicity of being installed in her office. Thus, old Hebe being a
little the worse for wear, young Ganymede tripped up her heels.