While I was thus rendering myself a blessing first to one and then to

the other, Don Ferdinand de Leyva was making his arrangements for

leaving Grenada. I called on that nobleman before his departure, to

thank him once more for the advantageous post he had procured me. My

expressions of satisfaction were so lively, that he said, My dear Gil

Blas, I am delighted to find you in such good humor with my uncle the

archbishop. I am absolutely in love with him, answered I. His

goodness to me has been such as I can never sufficiently acknowledge.

Less than my present happiness could never have made me amends for

being at so great a distance from Don Cæsar and his son. I am

persuaded, replied he, that they are both of them equally chagrined

at having lost you. But possibly you are not separated forever;

fortune may some day bring you together again. I could not hear such

an idea started without being moved by it. My sighs would find vent;

and I felt at that moment so strong an affection for Don Alphonso,

that I could willingly have turned my back on the archbishop and all

the fine prospects that were opening to me, and have gone back to the

castle of Leyva, had but a mortification taken place in the back of

the scarecrow which had frightened me away. Don Ferdinand was not

insensible to the emotions that agitated me, and felt himself so much

obliged by them, that he took his leave with the assurance of the

whole family always taking an anxious interest in my fate.

Two months after this worthy gentleman had left us, in the luxuriant

harvest of my highest favor, a lowering storm came suddenly over the

episcopal palace; the archbishop had a stroke of apoplexy. By dint

of immediate applications and good nursing, in a few days there was

no bodily appearance of disease remaining. But his reverend

intellects did not so easily recover from their lethargy. I could

not help observing it to myself in the very first discourse that he

composed. Yet there was not such a wide gap between the merits of

the present and the former ones as to warrant the inference that the

sun of oratory was many degrees advanced in its post-meridian course.

A second homily was worth waiting for, because that would clearly

determine the line of my conduct. Alas, and well-a-day! when that

second homily came, it was a knock-down argument. Sometimes the good

prelate moved forward, and sometimes he moved backwards; sometimes he

mounted up into the garret, and sometimes dipped down into the

cellar. It was a composition of more sound than meaning, something

like a superannuated schoolmaster's theme, when he attempts to give

his boys more sense than he possesses of his own, or like a

capuchin's sermon, which only scatters a few artificial flowers of

paltry rhetoric over a barren desert of doctrine.

I was not the only person whom the alteration struck. The audience

at large, when he delivered it, as if they too had been pledged to

watch the advances of dotage, said to one another in a whisper all

round the church, Here is a sermon with symptoms of apoplexy in every

paragraph. Come, my good Coryphæus of the public taste in homilies,

said I then to myself, prepare to do your office. You see that my

lord archbishop is going very fast--you ought to warn him of it, not

only as his bosom friend, on whose sincerity he relies, but lest some

blunt fellow should anticipate you, and bolt out the truth in an

offensive manner, in that case you know the consequence; you would be

struck out of his will, where, no doubt, you have a more convertible

bequest than the licentiate Sedillo's library.

But as reason, like Janus, looks at things with two faces, I began to

consider the other side of the question; the hint seemed difficult to

wrap up so as to make it palatable. Authors in general are stark mad

on the subject of their own works, and such an author might be more

testy than the common herd of the irritable race; but that suspicion

seemed illiberal on my part, for it was impossible that my freedom

should be taken amiss when it had been forced upon me by so positive

an injunction. Add to this, that I reckoned upon handling the

subject skilfully, and cramming discretion down his throat like a

high-seasoned epicurean dish. After all my pro and con, finding that

I risked more by keeping silence than by breaking it, I determined to

venture on the delicate duty of speaking my mind.

Now there was but one difficulty; a difficulty indeed! how to open

the business. Luckily the orator himself extricated me from that

embarrassment, by asking what they said of him in the world at large,

and whether people were tolerably well pleased with his last

discourse. I answered that there could be but one opinion about his

homilies; but that it should seem as if the last had not quite struck

home to the hearts of the audience, like those which had gone before.

Do you really mean what you say, my friend? replied he, with a sort

of wriggling surprise. Then my congregation are more in the temper

of Aristarchus than of Longinus! No, may it please your grace,

rejoined I, quite the contrary. Performances of that order are above

the reach of vulgar criticism: there is not a soul but expects to be

saved by their influence. Nevertheless, since you have made it my

duty to be sincere and unreserved, I shall take the liberty of just

stating that your last discourse is not written with quite the

overpowering eloquence and conclusive argument of your former ones.

Does not your grace feel just as I do on the subject?

This ignorant and stupid frankness of mine completely blanched my

master's cheek; but he forced a fretful smile, and said, Then, good

Master Gil Blas, that piece does not exactly hit your fancy? I did

not mean to say that, your grace, interrupted I, looking very

foolish. It is very far superior to what any one else could produce,

though a little below par with respect to your own works in general.

I know what you mean, replied he. You think I am going down hill, do

not you? Out with it at once. It is your opinion that it is time

for me to think of retiring? I should never have had the

presumption, said I, to deliver myself with so little reserve, if it

had not been your grace's express command. I act in entire obedience

to your grace's orders; and I most obsequiously implore your grace

not to take offence at my boldness. I were unfit to live in a

Christian land, interrupted he, with stammering impatience,--I were

unfit to live in a Christian land if I liked you the less for such a

Christian virtue as sincerity. A man who does not love sincerity

sets his face against the distinguishing mark between a friend and a

flatterer. I should have given you infinite credit for speaking what

you thought, if you had thought any thing that deserved to be spoken.

I have been finely taken in by your outside show of cleverness,

without any solid foundation of sober judgment!

Though completely unhorsed, and at the enemy's mercy, I wanted to

make terms of decent capitulation, and to go unmolested into winter

quarters; but let those who think to appease an exasperated author,

and especially an author whose ear has been long attuned to the music

of his own praises, take warning by my fate. Let us talk no more on

the subject, my very young friend, said he. You are as yet scarcely

in the rudiments of good taste, and utterly incompetent to

distinguish between gold and tinsel. You are yet to learn that I

never in all my life composed a finer homily than that unfortunate

one which had not the honor of your approbation. The immortal part

of me, by the blessing of heaven on me and my congregation, is less

weighed down by human infirmity than when the flesh was stronger. We

all grow wiser as we grow older, and I shall in future select the

people about me with more caution; nor submit the castigation of my

works but to a much abler critic than yourself. Get about your

business! pursued he, giving me an angry shove by the shoulders out

of his closet; go and tell my treasurer to pay you a hundred ducats,

and take my priestly blessing in addition to that sum. God speed

you, good Master Gil Blas! I heartily pray that you may do well in

the world! There is nothing to stand in your way but the want of a

little better taste.

_CHAPTER V._

_THE COURSE WHICH GIL BLAS TOOK AFTER THE ARCHBISHOP HAD GIVEN HIM

HIS DISMISSAL. HIS ACCIDENTAL MEETING WITH THE LICENTIATE WHO WAS SO

DEEPLY IN HIS DEBT, AND A PICTURE OF GRATITUDE IN THE PERSON OF A

PARSON._

I made the best of my way out of the closet, cursing the caprice, or

more properly the dotage, of the archbishop, and more in dudgeon at

his absurdity, than cast down at the loss of his good graces. For

some time it was a moot point whether I should go and lay claim to my

hundred ducats; but after having weighed the matter dispassionately,

I was not such a fool as to quarrel with my bread and butter. There

was no reason why that money, fairly earned, should deprive me of my

natural right to make a joke of this ridiculous prelate; in which

good deed I promised myself not to be wanting, as often as himself or

his homilies were brought upon the carpet in my hearing.

I went therefore and asked the treasurer for a hundred ducats,

without telling a word about the literary warfare between his master

and me. Afterwards I called on Melchior de la Ronda, to take a long

leave of him. He was too much my friend not to sympathize with my

misfortune. While I was telling my story, vexation was strongly

imprinted on his countenance. In spite of all his respect for the

archbishop, he could not help blaming him; but, when in the fever of

my resentment I threatened to be a match for the prelate, and to

entertain the whole city at his expense, the prudent Melchior gave me

a salutary caution: Take my advice, my dear Gil Blas, and rather

pocket the affront. Men of a lower sphere in life should always be

cap in hand to people of quality, whatever may be their grounds of

complaint. It must be admitted there are some very coarse specimens

of greatness, which in themselves are scarcely deserving of the least

respect or attention; but even such animals have their weapons of

annoyance, and it is best to keep out of their way.

I thanked the old valet-de-chambre for the good counsel he had given

me, and promised to be guided by it. Pleased with my deference to

his opinion, he said to me, If you go to Madrid, be sure you call

upon my nephew, Joseph Navarro. He is factotum in the family of

Signor Don Balthazar de Zunigna, and I can venture to recommend him

as a lad in every respect worthy of your friendship. He is just as

nature made him, with all the vivacity of youth, courteous in his

manners, and forward to oblige; I could wish you to get acquainted

with him. I answered that I would not fail to go and see this Joseph

Navarro as soon as I should get to Madrid, whither I meant to return

in due time. Then did I turn my back on the episcopal palace, never

to grace it with my presence again. If I had kept my horse, I should

perhaps have set out for Toledo immediately; but I had sold it during

the period of my administration, supposing that I was in office for

life, and should not henceforward be migratory. My final resolution

was to hire a ready-furnished lodging, as I had made up my mind to

stay another month in Grenada, and then to pay the Count de Polan a

visit.

As dinner-hour was drawing nigh, I asked my landlady if there was any

eating-house in the neighborhood. She answered that there was a very

good one within a few yards of her house, where the accommodations

were excellent, and the company select and numerous. I made her show

me where it was, and went thither sharp set. I was shown into a

large room, resembling the hall of a monastery in every thing but

good cheer. There were ten or a dozen men sitting at a long table,

with a cloth spread over it that fretted in its own grease; but they,

with unoffended nostrils, were engaged in general conversation,

though they dined individually, each having a miserable scrap for his

portion. The people of the house brought me my allowance, which at

another time would have turned my stomach, and have made me sigh

after the luxuries of the table I had just lost. But at this moment

I was so indignant against the archbishop, that the homely fare of a

paltry eating-house seemed more palatable than the dainties of his

sumptuous board. It was a burning shame to see such a waste of

provisions served up in soups and sauces to pamper the appetite.

Arguing like a deep examiner in the economy of the human frame, and

reasoning medically as well as philosophically on the disproportion

between the simple wants of nature and the complexity of luxurious

indulgence, Cursed be they, said I, who invented those pernicious

dinners and suppers, where one must sit on the tenterhooks of

self-denial, for fear of overloading the storehouse and shop of the

whole body! Man wants but little here below; and provided he can but

keep body and soul together, the less he eats, the better. Thus did

I, in my surly vein, give utterance to wise saws; which, however just

in theory, had hitherto been little recommended by my practice.

While I was despatching my commons, without any danger of a surfeit

from repletion, the licentiate Lewis Garcias, who had got the living

of Gabia in the manner above mentioned, came into the room. The

moment he recognized me, he ran into my arms with all the cordiality

of friendship, or rather with the extravagant joy of a lover after a

long exile from his mistress. He folded me repeatedly within his

sincere embrace, and I was compelled to stand the brunt of a

long-winded compliment on the unparalleled disinterestedness of my

conduct towards him. Gratitude is a fine virtue; and yet it is

wearisome when carried beyond due bounds. He took his seat next me,

saying, Well! a parson must not swear; though, by the mass, my dear

patron, since my good fortune has thrown me in your way, we will not

part without a jovial glass. But as there is no good wine in this

shabby inn, I will take you, if you please, after our make-shift

dinner, to a place where I will treat you with a couple of bottles,

rich, genuine, and old, in comparison of which the Falernian of

Horace was all a farce. The church will give us absolution, in the

cause of gratitude! If I could but get you for a few days down at my

parsonage of Gabia! Mæcenas was never more welcome to the poet's

Sabine farm, than the author of all my ease and comfort to the

choicest produce of a glebe which is mine only by your benevolence.

While he was holding this high-flown language, his little slice of

dinner was set before him. He fell to without the fear of

indigestion before his eyes, still heightening the luxury of the

repast, at intervals, by fine speeches addressed to me in the most

fulsome style of flattery. I took the opportunity, when his mouth

was filled with something more substantial, to edge in a word or two

amidst the torrent; and as he had not forgotten to ask after his

friend the steward, I made no bones about acknowledging that I was no

longer a hanger-on of the church. I even went so far as to

particularize the most trivial circumstances attending my

resignation, to all of which he listened with an attentive ear.

After all his fine professions, who would not have expected to see

him moved even to tears with the throes of resentful gratitude, to

hear him thunder bulls and interdicts against the superannuated

archbishop? The devil a bit! he did neither the one thing nor the

other. But his countenance fell, and his whole air was that of an

absent man; the rest of his dinner was bolted down without the

garnish of intermediate talk about Mæcenas; as soon as he had done,

he hurried from table without minding grace or gratitude, wished me

good day with a cold and distant air, and got off as fast as

possible. The unfeeling scoundrel, perceiving that I was no longer

in a situation for him to pump anything out of me, would not even

take the trouble to draw a decent veil over his dirty principles.

But such a blackguard could excite no other sensation than contempt

and laughter. Looking at him with derision, the fittest chastisement

for fellows like these, I called after him, loud enough to be heard

by the whole room, Stop there, you nun's priest! Go and put those

two bottles in ice against Mæcenas comes to the Sabine farm! Be sure

they are rich, genuine, and old, or they will be a farce to Falernian.

_CHAPTER VI._

_GIL BLAS GOES TO THE PLAY AT GRENADA. HIS SURPRISE AT SEEING ONE OF

THE ACTRESSES, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEREUPON._

No sooner had Garcias rid the room of his presence, than two

gentlemen came in, extremely well dressed, and took their seats close

by me. They began talking about the players of the Grenada company,

and about a new piece which just then had a great run. According to

their account, it was quite the town talk. Nothing would do for me

but to go and see it that very day. I had never been at the play

since my residence at Grenada. As I had lived nearly the whole time

in the archbishop's palace, where all such profane shows were

condemned as uncanonical, I had been cut off from every recreation of

that sort. All my knowledge of men and manners was drawn from

homilies!

I repaired, therefore, to the theatre at the appointed hour, and

found a very full house. All around me, discussions were going on

about the piece before the curtain drew up; and there was not a soul

in the numerous assembly but had some remark to make upon it. One

liked it, another could not bear it. Do not you think the dialogue

is particularly happy? said a candid critic on my right. Was there

ever such miserable stuff! cried a snarling critic on my left. In

good truth, if bad authors abound, it must be admitted that the

public are at variance about what is good and what is bad: but the

bad judges have a right to be pleased for their money; and as they

far outnumber the good ones, their favorite writers can never want

employment. When one only considers through what an ordeal dramatic

poets have to pass, it is a matter of wonder that any should be found

hardy enough at once to contend against the ignorance of the

multitude, and the random shot of those self-created guides in

matters of taste, who always pretend to lead the blindness of the

public judgment, and too frequently push it into the mire of

absurdity.

At length the buffoon of the piece came forward by way of prologue.

As soon as his grotesque countenance was visible, there was a general

clapping of hands; a sure indication of his being one of those

spoiled actors who are allowed to take any liberties with the pit,

and to be applauded through thick and thin. In fact, this player

neither opened his lips, nor moved a muscle, without exciting the

most extravagant raptures. He would have performed better had he

been less conscious what a favorite he was. But he presumed on that

circumstance most abominably. I observed that he sometimes forgot

what was set down for him, and took the license of adding to his part

out of his own free fancy; a common cause of complaint against low

comedians, which, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make

the judicious grieve. Would the audience but receive such mirth with

hisses, instead of crying bravo, they might restrain the absurd

practice, and purge the stage from barbarism.

Some of the other performers were greeted with the usual tokens on

their entrance, and particularly an actress who played the

chambermaid. There was something about her which more than usually

attracted my attention; and language must sink under the labor of

expressing my astonishment at tracing the features of Laura, that

fair, that chaste, that inexpressible she, whom I supposed to be

still at Madrid, warbling in one key, with hands, sides, voice, and

mind incorporate with Arsenia. But there could be no doubt of her

identity. The kick in her gallop, the leer in her eye, and the

tripping pertness of her tongue, all conspired in evidence that there

could be no mistake. Yet, as if I had refused belief to the

affidavit of my own eyes and ears, I asked her name of a gentleman

who was sitting beside me. What the deuce! Why, where do you come

from? said he. You must unquestionably be a new importation, not to

have seen or heard of the divine Estella.

The likeness was too perfect for me to be mistaken. It was easy to

comprehend why Laura, changing her sphere of action, changed her name

also; wherefore, from curiosity to know how matters stood with her,

since the public always pry into the most private concerns of

theatrical persons, I inquired of the same man whether this Estella

had any particular affair of gallantry on her hands. He informed me

that for the last two months there had been a great Portuguese

nobleman at Grenada,--his name was the Marquis de Marialva,--who had

laid out a great deal of money upon her. He might have told me more,

if I had not been afraid of becoming troublesome with my questions.

I was better employed in musing on the information this good

gentleman had given me than in attending to the play; and if any one

had asked me what it was all about, when the piece was over, I should

have been puzzled for an answer. I could do nothing but decline

Laura and Estella through all cases and numbers, till at length I

boldly made up my mind to call at her house the next day. Not but

there was some risk as to the reception she might give me: it might

be suspected, without excess of modesty, that my appearance would

give her no great pleasure in the high tide of her affairs; nor was

it at all improbable that so good an actress, to revenge herself on a

man with whom certainly she had an account to settle, might look

strange, and swear she had never seen his face before. Yet did none

of these apprehensions deter me from my venture. After a light

supper,--for all the meals at my eating-house were regulated on

principles of economy and temperance,--I withdrew to my chamber with

an anxious longing for the next day.

My sleep was short and interrupted, so that I got up by daybreak.

But as it was to be recollected that a mistress in high keep was not

likely to be visible early in the morning, I passed three or four

hours in dressing, shaving, powdering, and perfuming. It was my

business to present myself before her in a trim not to put her to the

blush at acknowledging my acquaintance. I sallied forth about ten

o'clock, and knocked at her door, after having inquired her address

at the theatre. She was living on the first floor of a large and

elegant house. I told a chambermaid, who opened the door to me, that

a young man wanted to speak with her lady. The chambermaid went in

to give my message, when all at once I heard her mistress call out,

not in the best-tempered tone in the world, Who is the young man?

What does he want? Show him up stairs.

This was a hint to me that my time was ill chosen; that probably her

Portuguese lover was at her toilet, and that she spoke so loud with

the laudable design of convincing him that she was not a sort of girl

to allow of any impertinent intruders. This conjecture of mine

turned out to be the fact; the Marquis de Marialva lounged away

almost every morning with her; I had made up my mind to be kicked

down stairs by way of welcome; but that admirable actress, never

forgetting her cue, ran forward with open arms at the sight of me,

exclaiming, Ah! my dear brother, is it you that I behold? On the

strength of so near a kindred, she was no niggard of her embraces,

but recollected herself so far as to say, turning round to the

Portuguese, My lord, you must excuse me if nature will put in her

claim, and trench upon good breeding. After three years of absence,

I cannot see a brother once again, whom I love so tenderly, without

expressing my feelings in all their warmth. Come! my dear Gil Blas,

continued she, addressing me afresh, tell me some news of the family:

in what circumstances did you leave it?

This whimsical scene disconcerted me at first, but I was not long in

seeing through Laura's intention, and playing up to her with a spirit

scarcely less than her own, answered, according to the plot, Heaven

be praised, sister, all our good folks are in perfect health, and

well in the world. I make no doubt, resumed she, but you must be

very much surprised to find me an actress in Grenada; but hear me

first, and blame me afterwards. It is three years, as you may

recollect, since my father thought to have established me

advantageously in marriage with Don Antonio Cœllo, an officer in

the service, who took me from the Asturias to Madrid, his native

place. Six months after our arrival, he got into an affair of honor

in consequence of his violent temper. Some attentions incautiously

paid to me were the cause of the affray, and his antagonist was

killed. This gentleman was of a family high in rank and interest.

My husband, who, though well born, had very few connections, made his

escape into Catalonia with every thing he could get together in

jewels and ready money. He embarked at Barcelona, went over into

Italy, enlisted in the Venetian service, and finally lost his life in

the Morea, fighting against the Turks. In the mean time, a landed

estate which constituted our whole revenue was confiscated, and I was

left a widow with very little for my support. What was to be done in

so pressing an emergency? There was nothing left to pay my

travelling expenses back into the Asturias. And then what should I

have done there? I should have got nothing from my family but a long

string of condolences, which would have furnished me neither with

food nor with raiment. On the other hand, I had been too well

brought up to fall into those courses, into which too many poor young

women are betrayed for the sake of a scandalous subsistence. There

was but one thing remaining for me to determine on. I turned actress

to preserve my morals.

So tingling a sense of ridicule came over me when Laura wound up her

romance with this pious motive for turning actress, that I could

scarcely refrain from relieving myself by a fit of laughter. But

gravity was of too much consequence to be dispensed with, and I said

to her with an air the counterpart of her own, My dear sister, I

entirely approve of your conduct, and am heartily glad to meet with

you at Grenada, and moreover settled on so respectable a footing.

The Marquis de Marialva, who had not lost a word of all these fine

speeches, swallowed down blindfold whatever Don Antonio's widow

thought fit to drench his credulity with. He took part in the

conversation too, and asked me whether I had any fixed employment in

Grenada or elsewhere. I paused for a moment to consider whether and

after what manner I should lie; but as there seemed no need in this

case to draw on my invention, I told the truth by way of variety. In

a plain, matter-of-fact manner did I rehearse my introduction to the

archbishop's palace, and my discharge therefrom, to the infinite

amusement of his Portuguese lordship. To be sure, in telling the

truth, I did not keep my word, for I could not help launching out a

little at the archbishop's expense, in spite of my solemn promise

given to Melchior. But the best of the joke was, that Laura, taking

my story for a fiction invented after her example, burst out into

peals of laughter; whereas the whimsicality of the circumstance would

have raised a soberer mirth, had she known it to have been alloyed

with the base ingredient of veracity.

After having come to the end of my tale, which closed with just

mentioning the lodging I had taken, dinner was announced. I

instantly motioned to withdraw, as if intending to take that frugal

meal at home; but Laura would not hear of it. Do you mean to affront

me, brother? said she. You must dine here. Indeed I cannot think of

your staying any longer at a paltry inn. You must positively board

and lodge in my house. Send your trunks hither this very evening;

there is a spare bed for you.

His Portuguese lordship, possibly not altogether relishing this

excess of hospitality even to a brother, then interfered between us,

and said to Laura, No, Estella, you have not sufficient accommodation

to give him a bed without inconvenience. Your brother seems to be a

clever young fellow, and the circumstance of his being so nearly

related to you gives him a strong claim on my kindness. He shall be

put at once upon my establishment. I am in want of a secretary, and

shall delight in giving him the appointment; he shall be my

right-hand man. Let him be sure to come and sleep at my house this

very night; I will order a room to be got ready for him. I will fix

his regular salary at four hundred ducats; and if, on better

acquaintance, I have reason, as I trust I shall, to be satisfied with

him, I will place him in a situation to laugh at the consequences of

having been a little too plain-spoken with his patron the archbishop.

My acknowledgments to the marquis for this high honor were followed

by those of Laura, who far exceeded me in powers of panegyric. Let

us drop the subject, interrupted he; it is a settled point. Settled

as it was, he confirmed the contract on the lips of his green-room

Dulcinea, and went his way. She immediately pulled me by the arm

into a closet, where, secure from interruption, she cried out, Cut my

laces! I shall burst if I do not give way at once to the fit of

laughter that is coming over me. And so she probably would; for she

threw herself into an arm-chair, and holding both her sides, shouted

out her convulsive peal of mirth like a mad woman. It was impossible

for me to refrain from following her example. When we had exhausted

our risible propensities, Own, Gil Blas, said she, that we have just

been acting a very humorous farce. But I did not look for the

concluding scene. My only thought was to secure you board and

lodging under my own roof; and there was no other possibility of

making the proposition in a modest way but by passing you off for my

brother. But I am heartily glad that the chapter of accidents has

opened with so good a berth for you. The Marquis de Marialva is a

nobleman of liberal and honorable sentiments, who will be better than

his word in what he does for you. But confess now! There is

scarcely a woman in existence except myself, would have given so

coming-on a reception to a fellow who shirks his friends without

saying with your leave or by your leave. I, however, am one of those

simple-hearted girls, who are glad to receive back again the base man

they have once loved, though he should have offended and repented

seven, or even seven thousand times.

The best way for me was to acknowledge the extreme ill-breeding of

which I had been guilty, to blush and beg pardon once for all. After

this explanation, she led the way to a very handsome dining-room. We

placed ourselves at table, where, having a chambermaid and a footboy

for eye-witnesses, we kept within the bounds of brother and sister.

When we had done dinner, we went back again into the same closet

where we had been conversing before. Having our time to ourselves,

my paragon of a Laura, giving herself up to her natural love of

merriment, and to her no less natural curiosity, required from me a

faithful and true narrative of all my pros and cons, my ins and outs,

since that unmannerly separation of ours. I gave her a full and

particular account; nothing extenuating on my own behalf, nor setting

down aught in malice on the other side. When I had quenched her

thirst after a story, she slaked mine, by communicating the

particulars of her eventful life to the following effect.

_CHAPTER VII._

_LAURA'S STORY._

I shall just run over to you, as briefly as possible, the

circumstances which led me to embrace the theatrical profession.

After you took French leave, so much to your credit, great events

happened. My mistress Arsenia, more surfeited with a glut of

pleasures than scandalized at their immorality, renounced the stage,

and took me with her to a fine estate which she had just purchased in

the neighborhood of Zenora with the wages of her sinful life. We

soon got acquainted in the town. Our visits there were very

frequent, and sometimes for a day or two together. With the

exception of these little excursions, we were as closely domesticated

as probationers in a nunnery, and almost as piously employed.

On one of our high days and holidays, Don Felix Maldonado, the

corregidor's only son, saw me by chance, and took a liking to me. He

soon found an opportunity of speaking with me in private; and, as it

is in vain to affect modesty before one who knows me so well, there

was some little contrivance of my own to bring the interview about.

The young gentleman was not twenty years of age; the very picture of

Venus's sweetheart, or Venus's sweetheart the very picture of him,

with a form for a sculptor to work from; with an address so elegant,

and with sentiments so generous, as to throw even his personal graces

into the background. There was such a winning way with him, so

pressing an earnestness to prevail, when he took a large diamond from

his own finger, and slid it upon mine, that it would have been quite

brutal not to have let it stay there. It was really something like

sentiment that I began to entertain towards a swain of so interesting

a character. But what an absurd thing it is for wenches of a certain

sort to hook themselves upon young men of family, when their surly

fathers hold official situations! The corregidor, who had scarcely

his equal in the whole tribe of corregidors, got wind of our

correspondence, and determined to close it in a summary manner. He

sent a host of alguazils to take me into custody, who dragged me

away, in spite of my cries and tears, to the house of correction for

female penitents.

There, without bill of indictment or form of trial, the lady abbess

ordered me to be stripped of my ring and my clothes, and to be

dressed in the habit of the institution,--a long gown of gray serge

tied about the middle with a strap of black leather, whence depended

a rosary with large beads swinging down to my heels. After this

pleasant reception, they took me into a hall, where there was an old

monk,--the deuce knows of what order,--who set to work preaching up

repentance and resignation, pretty much in the same strain as Dame

Leonarda, when she exhorted you to patience in the subterraneous

cavern. He told me that I was excessively obliged indeed to those

good people who had so kindly shut me up, and could never thank them

sufficiently for their good deed in rescuing me from the harpy talons

of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But I must frankly own that

all my other sins were pressed down and heaped high with ingratitude:

far from overflowing with the milk of human kindness towards those

who had conferred such a favor upon me, I abused them in terms that

would have put any dictionary to the blush.

Eight days thus passed in this wilderness of desolation; but on the

ninth--for I had notched the hours and even the minutes on a

stick--my fate seemed beginning to take another turn. Crossing a

little court, I met the house steward, a personage whose will was

absolute; yes, the lady abbess herself was obedient to his will. He

rendered an account of his stewardship to none but the corregidor, on

whom alone he was dependent, and whose confidence in him was

unbounded. His name was Pedro Zendono, and the town of Salsedon in

Biscay laid claim to the honor of his birth. Figure to yourself a

tall man, with the complexion of a mummy and the bare anatomy of a

dealer in mortification; he might have sat for the penitent thief in

a picture of the crucifixion. He scarcely ever cast a carnal glance

towards us Magdalens. You never saw such a face of rank hypocrisy in

all your life, though you have spent some part of it under the same

roof with the archbishop, and are not unacquainted with the clergy of

his diocese.

But to return from this digression; ... I met this Signor Zendono,

who said to me slyly as he passed, Take comfort, my girl; I am

sensibly affected with your wretched case. He said no more, and went

on his way, leaving me to make my own comments on so concise and

general a text. As he looked like a good man, and there was no

positive evidence to set against his looks, I was simpleton enough to

fancy that he had taken the trouble of inquiring why I was shut up,

and meant, not finding me so atrocious a culprit as to deserve such

shameful insults, to take my part with the corregidor. But I was not

up to the tricks of the Biscayan; he had a much longer head. He was

turning over in his mind the scheme of an elopement, and made the

proposal to me in profound privacy some days afterwards. My dear

Laura, said he, your sufferings have taken such deep possession of my

mind that I have determined to end them. I am perfectly aware that

my own ruin is involved in the measure, but needs must when the

tender passion drives. To-morrow morning do I intend to take you out

of prison, and conduct you in person to Madrid. No sacrifice is too

great for the pleasure of being your deliverer.

I was very near fainting with surprise and joy at this promise of

Zendono, who, concluding from my acknowledgments that my very life

depended on my rescue, had the effrontery to carry me off next day in

the face of the whole town, by the following device: He told the lady

abbess that he had orders to take me before the corregidor, who was

at his country box a few miles off; and, without betraying himself by

a single change of countenance, packed me off with him for my

companion, in a post-chaise drawn by two good mules, which he had

bought for the occasion. Our only attendant was the driver, a

servant of his own, and entirely devoted to the steward by stronger

ties than those of gratitude. We began bowling away, not in the

direction of Madrid, as I had taken for granted, but towards the

frontiers of Portugal, whither we got in less time than it took the

corregidor of Zamora to receive the deposition of our flight, and

uncouple his pack or set them barking at our heels.

Before we entered Braganza, the Biscayan made me put on man's

clothes, with which he had taken the precaution of providing himself.

Reckoning on me as being fairly launched in the same boat with him,

he said to me in the inn where we put up, Lovely Laura, do not take

it unkindly of me to have brought you into Portugal. The corregidor

of Zamora will make our own country too hot to hold us, for in his

eyes we are two criminals, under the weight of whose enormities it is

not for Spain to groan. But we may set his malice at defiance in

this distant realm, though at the present conjuncture under the

dominion of the Spanish monarchy. At least we shall stand a better

chance for safety here than at home. League your fortunes with those

of a man who would follow you in prosperity or in adversity through

the world. Let us fix our residence at Coimbra. There I will get

employed as a spy for the Inquisition; under the cover of that

formidable tribunal--a refreshing shade for us, but Cimmerian

darkness to its victims--our days will glide smoothly on in ease and

pleasure, and we shall fatten on the spoil of religious delinquency.

A proposal so much to the point gave me to understand that I had to

do with a knight who had other motives for officiating as the

guardian of distressed damsels, besides the honor of chivalry. I saw

at once that he reckoned much on my gratitude, and still more on my

distress. Nevertheless, though these two pleas were almost equally

eloquent in his favor, I rejected his addresses with disdain. The

reason was that there were two advocates still more eloquent on the

side of a refusal--a certainty that he was disagreeable, and a strong

suspicion that he was poor. But when he returned to the charge, and

offered to say the grace of matrimony before he fell to, proving to

me at the same time, by the undeniable evidence of cash in hand, that

his stewardship had enabled him to live in clover for a long time to

come, the truth must come out in spite of blushes; my heart was

softened, and my ears unstopped. I was dazzled by the gold and

jewels which he laid out in burning row before me, and became a

living monument, in my own person, that miraculous transformations

are effected by the power of pelf, as well as by the wand of love.

My Biscayan became, by little and little, quite another sort of man

in my eyes. His tall body and bare bones were plumped up into a

shapely and commanding figure; his cadaverous complexion was improved

into a manly brown; even that look, as if butter would not melt in

his mouth, was no longer hypocrisy, but a staid and decent aspect.

Having made these discoveries, I accepted his hand without any

material abhorrence, and he plighted the usual vows in all due form.

After this, like a good wife, I kept the spirit of contradiction as

much as possible under the hatches. We resumed our journey, and

Coimbra soon received a new family within its walls.

My husband stocked my wardrobe as became my sex and station, making

me a present of several diamonds, among which I fixed my eye on that

of Don Felix Maldonado. There were no further documents wanting to

give a shrewd guess whence came all the precious stones I had seen,

and to be morally certain that I had not married a troublesomely nice

observer of the eighth article in the decalogue. Yet, considering

myself as the main spring of all his little deviations from the

strict law of propriety, it was not for me to judge harshly on that

point. A woman can always find a palliation for the misdeeds which

are set in motion by the power of her own beauty. But for that, he

certainly would have ranked no higher than one of the wicked in my

estimation.

I had no great reason to complain of him for two or three months.

His attentions were always polite and kind, amounting apparently to a

sincere and tender affection. But no such thing! These proofs of

wedded love, this worshipping with the body, and endowing with the

worldly goods, were all but a copy of his countenance; for the

cheating fellow meant, as men serve a cucumber, to throw me away on

the first opportunity. One morning, at my return from mass, I found

nothing at home but the bare walls; the movables, not excepting my

own apparel, every stick and every thread, had been carried off.

Zendono and his faithful servant had taken their measures so

adroitly, that in less than an hour the house had been completely

gutted; so that with nothing but the gown upon my back, and Don

Felix's ring, as good luck would have it, on my finger, here stood I,

like another Ariadne, abandoned by the ungrateful rifler of my

effects as well as of my charms. But you may take my word for it, I

did not beguile the sense of my misfortunes in tragedy, elegy, scene

individable, or poem unlimited. I rather fell upon my knees, and

blessed my guardian angel for having delivered me from a rascal who

must sooner or later fall into the hands of justice. The time we had

passed together I considered in the light of a dead loss, and my

spirits were all on the alert to make up for it. If I had been

inclined to stay in Portugal, as a hanger-on to some woman of

fashion, I should have found no difficulty in suiting myself; but

whether it was patriotism, or some astrological conjunction,

preparing a better fortune for me under the influence of the planets,

my whole heart was bent on getting back into Spain. I applied to a

jeweller, who valued my diamond and gave me cash for it, and then

took my departure with an old Spanish lady who was going to Seville

in a post-chaise.

This lady, whose name was Dorothea, had been to see a relation

settled at Coimbra, and was on her return to Seville, where she

lived. There was such a sympathy between us as made us fast friends

on the very first day of our acquaintance; and the attachment grew so

close while we travelled together, that the lady insisted, at our

journey's end, on my making her house my home. I had no reason to

repent having formed such a connection. Never was there a woman of a

more charming character. One might still conclude, from the turn of

her countenance, and from the spirit not yet quenched in her eyes,

that in her youth the catgut of many a guitar must have been fretted

under her window. As a proof of this, she had many trials what a

state of widowhood was; her husbands had all been of noble birth, and

her finances were flourishing on the accumulation of her several

jointures.

Among other admirable qualities, she had that of not visiting

severely the frailties of her own sex. When I let her into the

secret of mine, she entered so warmly into my interests as to speak

of Zendono with more sincerity than good manners. What graceless

fellows these men are! said she, in a tone from which one might infer

that she had met with some light-fingered steward in the passing of

her accounts. They would not be worth picking off a dunghill, if one

could do without them! There is a large fraternity of sorry

scoundrels in the world, who make it their sport to gain the hearts

of women, and then desert them. There is, however, one consoling

circumstance, my dear child. According to your account, you are by

no means bound fast to that faithless Biscayan. If your marriage

with him was sufficiently formal to save your credit with the world,

on the other hand, it was contracted loosely enough to admit of your

trying your luck at a better match, whenever an opportunity may fall

in your way.

I went out every day with Dorothea, either to church, or to visit

among her friends; both likely occasions of picking up an adventure;

so that I attracted the notice of several gentlemen. There were some

of them who had a mind to feel how the land lay. They made their

proposals to my venerable protectress; but these had not wherewithal

to defray the expenses of an establishment, and those were mere

unfledged boys under age; an insuperable objection, which left me

very little merit in turning a deaf ear to them. One day a whim

seized Dorothea and me to go and see a play at Seville. The bills

announced a favorite and standard piece: El Embaxador de Si-mismo,

written by Lope de Vega.

Among the actresses who came upon the stage, I discovered one of my

old cronies. It was impossible to have forgotten Phenicia, that

bouncing good-humored girl whom you have seen as Florimonde's

waiting-maid, and have supped with more than once at Arsenia's. I

was aware that Phenicia had left Madrid about two years ago, but had

never heard of her turning actress. I longed so earnestly to embrace

her, that the piece appeared quite tedious. Perhaps, too, there

might be some fault in those who played it, as being neither good

enough nor bad enough to afford me entertainment. For as to my own

temper, which is that of seeking diversion wherever I can find it, I

must confess that an actor supremely ridiculous answers my purpose

just as well as the most finished performer of the age.

At last, the moment I had been waiting for being arrived, namely, the

dropping of the curtain on this favorite and standard piece, we

went--for my widow would go with me--behind the scenes, where we

caught a glimpse of Phenicia, who was playing off the amiable and

unaffected simpleton, and listening with all the primness of studied

simplicity to the soft chirping of a young stagefinch, who had

evidently suffered himself to be caught in the birdlime of her

professional or meretricious talents. No sooner did her eye meet

mine, than she quitted him with a genteel apology, ran up to me with

open arms, and lavished upon me all the demonstrations of strong

attachment imaginable. Our expressions of joy at this unexpected

meeting were indeed reciprocal; but neither time nor place admitting

of any very copious indulgence in the privilege of asking questions,

we adjourned till the following day, with a promise of renewing our

mutual inquiries thick and threefold, under the shelter of her

friendly roof.

The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable passion of woman,

coeval with the act of breathing. I could not get a wink of sleep

all night for the burning desire of having a grapple with Phenicia,

and closing in upon her in the conflict of curiosity. Witness, all

the powers who preside over tattling, whether the love of lying in

bed--another passion of woman--prevented me from getting up and

flying to my appointment as early as good manners would allow. She

lived with the rest of the company in a large, ready-furnished

lodging. A female attendant who met me at entrance, on being

requested to show me Phenicia's apartment, led the way up stairs to a

gallery, along which were ranged ten or twelve small rooms, divided

only by partitions of deal boards, and inhabited by this merry band.

My conductress knocked at a door, which Phenicia opened; for her

tongue was cruelly on the fidget to be let loose, as well as my own.

We allowed ourselves no time for the impertinent ceremonies which

usually usher in a visit, but plunged at once into a most furious

career of loquacity. It seemed as if we should have a tight bout

together. There were so many interrogatories to be bandied backwards

and forwards, that question and answer rebounded like tennis-balls,

only with tenfold velocity.

After having related our adventures each to other, and inquired into

the actual condition of affairs, Phenicia asked me how I meant to

provide for myself. My reply was, that I purposed, while waiting for

something better, to get a situation with some young lady of quality.

For shame! exclaimed my other self; you shall not think of such a

thing. Is it possible, my darling, that you should not yet be

disgusted with menial service? Are you not heartily sick of knocking

under to the good or ill pleasure of others, of being cap-in-hand to

all their caprices, and after all to be entertained with that

unchangeable tune called a scolding--in a word, to be a downright

slave? Why do not you follow my example, and turn your thoughts

towards the stage? Nothing can be better suited to people of parts,

when they happen not to be equally favored in the articles of wealth

and birth. It is a sphere of life which holds a middle rank between

the nobility and mere tradespeople; a profession exempted from all

troublesome restraint, and raised far above the common prejudices of

humble and decent society. The public are our bankers, and we draw

upon them at sight. We live in a continual round of ecstasy, and

spend our money to the full as fast as we earn it.

The theatre (for she went on at a great rate) is favorable above all

to women. When I lived with Florimonde,--it is a misery to think of

it,--I was reduced to take up with the supernumeraries of the

prince's company; not a single man of fashion paid the least

attention to my figure. How came that about? Because they never got

a glimpse of it. The finest picture in the world may escape the

admiration of the connoisseurs, if it is not placed in a proper

light. But since I have been suitably framed and varnished, which

could only happen in consequence of a theatrical finish, what a

revolution! The finest young fellows of all the towns we pass

through are shuffling at my heels. An actress, therefore, has all

her little comforts about her, without deviating from the line of her

duty. If she is discreet,--by which we mean that she should not

admit more than one lover into her good graces at a time,--her

exemplary conduct is cried up as without a parallel. She is called a

very Niobe for her coldness; and when she changes her favorite, she

is reprimanded as slightly by the world as a lawful widow who marries

a few weeks too soon after the death of her first husband. If,

however, the widow should look for luck in odd numbers, and take to

herself a third, the contempt of all mankind is poured down on her

devoted head; she is considered as a monster of indelicacy; whereas

we happier women are so much the more in vogue, as we add to the list

of our favorites. After having been served up to a hundred different

lovers, some battered nobleman finds us a dainty dish for himself.

Do you mean that by way of news? interrupted I, as she uttered the

last sentiment. Do you imagine me to be ignorant of these

advantages? I have often conned them over in my mind, and they are

but too alluring to a girl of my character. The attractions of the

stage would be irresistible, were inclination all. But some little

talent is indispensable, and I have not a spark. I have sometimes

attempted to rehearse passages from plays before Arsenia. She was

never satisfied with my performance, and that disgusted me with the

profession. You are easily put out of conceit with yourself, replied

Phenicia. Do not you know that these great actresses are very apt to

be jealous? With all their vanity, they are afraid lest some newer

face should put them out of countenance. In short, I would not be

guided by Arsenia on that subject; she did not give her real opinion.

In my judgment, and without meaning to flatter you, the theatre is

your natural element. You have admirable powers, free and graceful

action, a fine-toned voice, volubility of declamation, and such a

turn of countenance! Ah, you little rogue! you will bring all the

young fellows behind the scenes, if once you take to the boards!

She plied me with many flattering compliments besides, and made me

recite some lines, only by way of enabling me to form my own judgment

as to my theatrical genius. Now that she was my censor, it seemed

quite another thing. She praised me up to the skies, and held all

the actresses in Madrid as mere makeweights in the scale. After such

a testimony, it would have been inexcusable to hesitate about my own

merit. Arsenia stood attainted, nay, convicted of jealousy and

treachery. There could be no question about my being everything that

was delightful. Two players happened to drop in by accident, and

Phenicia prevailed on me to repeat the lines I had already spouted;

they fell into a sort of enthusiastic trance, whence they were roused

only to launch out fervently in admiration of me. Literally, had

they all three been flattering me up for a wager, they could not have

adopted a more extravagant scale of panegyric. My modesty was not

proof against such praise from those who were themselves praised. I

began to think myself really worthy of something; and now was my

whole heart and soul turned towards a theatrical life.

Since this is the case, said I to Phenicia, the affair is determined.

I will follow your advice, and engage in your company, if they will

accept me. My friend, transported with joy at this proposal, clasped

me in her arms; and her two companions seemed no less delighted than

herself at finding me in that humor. It was settled that I should

attend the theatre on the following day in the morning, and exhibit

before the collected body the same sample of my talent as I had just

displayed. If I had bought golden opinions from Phenicia and her

friends, the actors in general were still more complimentary in their

judgment, after I had recited but twenty lines before them. They

gave me an engagement with the utmost willingness. Then there was

nothing thought of but my first appearance. To make it as striking

as possible, I laid out all the money remaining from the sale of my

ring; and though my funds would not allow of being splendid in my

dress, I discovered the art of substituting taste for glitter, and

converting my poverty into a new grace.

At length I came out. What clapping of hands! what general

admiration! It would be speaking faintly, my friend, to tell you

downright that the spectators were all in an ecstasy. You must have

heard with your own ears what a noise I made at Seville, to believe

it. The whole talk of the town was about me, and the house was

crowded for three weeks successively; so that this novelty restored

the theatre to its popularity, when it was evidently beginning to

decline. Thus did I come upon the stage, and step into public favor

at once. But to come upon the stage with such distinction is

generally a prelude to coming upon the town; or at least to putting

one's self up at auction to the best bidder. Twenty sparks of all

ages, from seventeen to seventy, were on the list of candidates, and

would have worn me in my newest gloss. Had I followed my own

inclination, I should have chosen the youngest, and the most of a

lady's man; but in our profession, interest and ambition must bear

the sway, till we have feathered our nest; that is as invariable a

rule as any in the prompt-book. On this principle, Don Ambrosio de

Nisana, a man in whom age and ugliness had done their worst, but

rich, generous, and one of the most powerful noblemen in Andalusia,

had the refusal of the bargain. It is true that he paid handsomely

for it. He took a fine house for me, furnished it in the extreme of

magnificence, allowed me a man cook of the first eminence, two

footmen, a lady's maid, and a thousand ducats a month for my personal

expenses. Add to all this a rich wardrobe, and an elegant assortment

of jewels.

What a revolution in my affairs! My poor brain was completely

turned. I could not believe myself to be the same person. No wonder

if girls soon forget the meanness and misery whence some man of

quality has rescued them in a fit of caprice. My confession shall be

without reserve: public applause, flattering speeches buzzed about on

every side, and Don Ambrosio's passion kindled such a flame of

self-conceit as kept me in a continual ferment of extravagance. I

considered my talents as a patent of nobility. I put on the woman of

fashion, and becoming as chary as I had hitherto been lavish of my

amorous challengers, determined to look no lower than dukes, counts,

or marquises.

My lord of Nisana brought some of his friends to sup with me every

evening. It was my care to invite the best companions among our

actresses, and we wore away a good part of the night in laughing and

drinking. I fell in very kindly with so delicious a life; but it

lasted only six months. Men of rank are apt to be whimsical; but for

that fault, they would be too heavenly. Don Ambrosio deserted me for

a young coquette from Grenada, who had just brought a pretty person

to the Seville market, and knew how to set off her wares to the best

advantage. But I did not fret after him more than four-and-twenty

hours. His place was supplied by a young fellow of two-and-twenty,

Don Lewis d' Alcacer, with whom few Spaniards could vie in point of

face and figure.

You will ask me, doubtless, and it is natural to do so, why I

selected so green a sprig of nobility for my paramour, when my own

experience so strongly dissuaded from such a choice. But, besides

that Don Lewis had neither father nor mother, and was already in

possession of his fortune, you are to know that there is no danger of

disagreeable consequences attaching to any but girls in a servile

condition of life, or those unfortunate loose fish who are game for

every sportsman. Ladies of our profession are privileged persons; we

let off our charms like a rocket, and are not answerable for the

damage where they fall; so much the worse for those families whose

heirs we set in a blaze.

As for Alcacer and myself, we were so strongly attached to one

another, that I verily believe, Love never yet did such execution as

when he took aim at us two. Our passion was of such a violent

nature, that we seemed to be under the influence of some spell.

Those who knew how well we were together, thought us the happiest

pair in the world; but we, who knew best, found ourselves the most

miserable. Though Don Lewis had as fine an outside as ever fell to

the lot of man, he was at the same time so jealous, that there was no

living for vexation at his unfounded surmises. It was of no use,

knowing his weakness and humoring it, to lay an embargo on my looks,

if ever a male creature peeped into harbor; his suspicious temper,

seldom at a loss for some crime to impute, rendered my armed

neutrality of no avail. Our most tender moments had always a spice

of wrangling. There was no standing the brunt of it; patience could

hold out no longer on either side, and we quarrelled more peaceably

than we had loved. Could you believe that the last day of our being

together was the happiest? Both equally wearied out by the perpetual

recurrence of unpleasant circumstances, we gave a loose to our

transports when we embraced for the last time. We were like two

wretched captives, breathing the fresh air of liberty after all the

horrors of our prison-house.

Since that adventure, I have worn a breastplate against the little

archer. No more amorous nonsense for me, at least to a troublesome

excess! It is quite out of our line to sigh and complain like

Arcadian shepherdesses. Those should never give way to a passion in

private, who hold it up to ridicule before the public.

While these events were passing in my domestic establishment, Fame

had not hung her trumpet breathless on the willows; she spread it

about universally that I was an inimitable actress. That celestial

tattler, though bankrupt times out of number, still contrives to

revive her credit; the comedians of Grenada therefore wrote to offer

me an engagement in their company; and by way of evidence that the

proposal was not to be scorned, they sent me a statement of their

daily receipts and disbursements, with their terms, which seemed to

be advantageous. That being the case, I closed, though grieved in my

heart to part with Phenicia and Dorothea, whom I loved as well as

woman is capable of loving woman. I left the first laudably employed

in melting the plate of a little haggling goldsmith, whose vanity so

far got the better of his avarice that he must needs have a

theatrical heroine for his mistress. I forgot to tell you that on my

translation to the stage, from mere whim, I changed the name of Laura

to that of Estella; and it was under the latter name that I took this

engagement at Grenada.

My first appearance was no less successful here than at Seville; and

I soon felt myself wafted along by the sighs of my admirers. But

resolving not to favor any except on honorable terms, I kept a guard

of modesty in my intercourse with them, which threw dust in their

eyes. Nevertheless, not to be the dupe of virtues which pay very

indifferently, and were not exactly at home in their new mansion, I

was balancing whether or not to take up with a young fellow of mean

extraction, who had a place under government, and assumed the style

of a gentleman in virtue of his office, with a good table and

handsome equipage, when I saw the Marquis de Marialva for the first

time. This Portuguese nobleman, travelling over Spain from mere

curiosity, stopped at Grenada as he passed through it. He came to

the play. I did not perform that evening. His examination of the

actresses was very particular, and he found one to his liking. Their

acquaintance commenced on the very next day; and the definitive

treaty was very nearly concluded when I appeared upon the stage.

What with some personal graces, and no little affectation in setting

them off, the weather-cock veered about all on a sudden; my

Portuguese was mine, and mine only, till death do us part. Yet,

since the truth must be told, I knew perfectly that my sister of the

sock and buskin had entrapped this nobleman, and spared no pains to

chouse her out of her prize; to my success you are yourself a

witness. She bears me no small grudge on that account; but the thing

could not be avoided. She ought to reflect that it is the way of all

female flesh; that the dearest friends play off the same trick upon

one another, and put a good face upon it into the bargain.

_CHAPTER VIII._

_THE RECEPTION OF GIL BLAS AMONG THE PLATERS AT GRENADA; AND ANOTHER

OLD ACQUAINTANCE PICKED UP IN THE GREEN-ROOM._

Just as Laura was finishing her story, there came in an old actress

who lived in her neighborhood, and was come to take her to the

theatre as she passed by. This venerable tutelary of the stage was

admirably fitted to play some superannuated strumpet among the

heathen goddesses in a pantomime. My sister was not remiss in

introducing her brother to that stale old harridan, whereupon a

profusion of compliments was bandied about on both sides.

I left them together, telling the steward's relict that I would join

her again at the playhouse, as soon as I had sent my baggage to the

Marquis de Marialva's, to whose residence she directed me. First I

went to the room I had hired, whence, after having settled with my

landlady, I repaired with a porter who carried my luggage to a large

ready-furnished house, where my new master was quartered. At the

door I met his steward, who asked me if I was not the lady Estella's

brother. I answered in the affirmative. Then you are welcome,

Signor Cavalier, replied he. The Marquis de Marialva, whose steward

I have the honor to be, has commissioned me to receive you properly.

There is a room got ready for you; I will show you the way to it, if

you please, that you may be quite at home. He took me up to the top

of the house, and thrust me into so small a room, that a very narrow

bed, a chest of drawers, and two chairs completely filled it. This

was my apartment. You will not have much spare room, said my

conductor, but as a set-off, I promise you that you shall be superbly

lodged at Lisbon. I locked up my portmanteau in the wardrobe, and

put the key in my pocket, asking at the same time what was the hour

of supper. The answer was, that his lordship seldom supped at home,

but allowed each servant a monthly sum for board wages. I put

several other questions, and learned that the marquis's people were a

happy set of idle fellows. After a conversation short and sweet, I

left the steward to go and look for Laura, reflecting, much to my own

satisfaction, on the happy omens I drew from the opening of my new

situation.

As soon as I got to the playhouse door, and mentioned my name as

Estella's brother, there was free admission at once. You might have

observed the forwardness of the guards to make way for me, just as if

I had been one of the most considerable noblemen in Grenada. All the

supernumeraries, doorkeepers, and receivers of checks whom I

encountered in my progress, made me their very best bows. But what I

should like best to give the reader an idea of is the serious

reception which the merry vagrants gave me in the green-room, where I

found the whole dramatis personæ ready dressed, and on the point of

drawing up the curtain. The actors and actresses, to whom Laura

introduced me, fell upon me without mercy. The men were quite

troublesome with their greetings; and the women, not to be outdone,

laid their plastered faces alongside of mine, till they covered it

with a villanous compound of red and white. No one choosing to be

the last in making me welcome, they all paid their compliments in a

breath. Æolus himself, answering from all the points of the compass

at once, would not have been a match for them: but my sister was; for

the loan of her tongue was always at the service of a friend, and she

brought me completely out of debt.

But I did not get clear off with the squeezes of the principal

performers. The civilities of the scene-painters, the band, the

prompter, the candle-snuffer, and the call-boy were to be endured

with patience; all the understrappers in the theatre came to see me

run the gantlet. One would have supposed one's self in a foundling

hospital, and that they had none of them ever known what sort of

animals brothers and sisters were.

In the mean time the play began. Some gentlemen, who were behind the

scenes, then ran to get seats in the front of the house: for my part,

feeling myself quite at home, I continued in conversation with those

of the actors who were waiting to go on. Among the number there was

one whom they called Melchior. The name struck me. I looked hard at

the person who answered to it, and thought I had seen him somewhere.

At last I recollected that it was Melchior Zapata, a poor strolling

player, who has been described, in the first volume of this true

history, as soaking his crusts in the pure element.

I immediately took him aside, and said, I am much mistaken if you are

not that Signor Melchior with whom I had the honor of breakfasting

one day by the margin of a clear fountain, between Valladolid and

Segovia. I was with a journeyman barber. We had some provisions

with us which we clubbed with yours, and all three partook of a

little rural feast, to which wit and anecdote gave additional relish.

Zapata bethought him for a minute or two, and then answered, You tell

me of a circumstance which often since came across my mind. I had

then just been trying my fortune at Madrid, and was returning to

Zamora. I recollect perfectly that my affairs were a little out at

elbows. I recollect it too, replied I, by the token of a doublet

which you wore, lined with play-bills. Neither have I forgotten that

you complained of having a wife cursed with incorruptible chastity.

O! that misfortune has found its remedy long ago, said Zapata,

shaking his ears. By all the powers of womanhood, the jade has

effectually reformed that virtue, and given me a warmer lining to my

doublet.

I was going to congratulate him on his wife's having shown so much

sense, when he was obliged to leave me and go on the stage. Being

curious to know what sort of an animal his wife was, I went up to an

actor and desired him to point her out. He did so, saying at the

same time, There she is; it is Narcissa--the prettiest of all our

women except your sister. I concluded that this must be the actress

in whose favor the Marquis de Marialva had declared before meeting

with his Estella; and my conjecture was but too correct. After the

play, I attended Laura home, where I saw several cooks preparing a

handsome entertainment. You may sup here, said she. I will do no

such thing, answered I: the marquis perhaps will like to be alone

with you. Not at all, replied she; he is coming with two of his own

friends and one of our gentlemen; you will just make the sixth. You

know that in our free and easy way there is no impropriety in

secretaries sitting down at table with their masters. Very true,

said I; but it is rather too soon to assume the privilege of a

favorite. I must first get employed in some confidential commission,

and then lay in my claim to that honorable distinction. Judging it

to be so best, I went out of Laura's house, and got back to my inn,

whither I reckoned on repairing every day, since my master had no

regular establishment.

_CHAPTER IX._

_AN EXTRAORDINARY COMPANION AT SUPPER; AND AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR

CONVERSATION._

I remarked in the coffee-room a sort of an old monk, habited in

coarse gray cloth, at supper, quite alone in a corner. I went and

sat opposite to him out of curiosity; we exchanged a civil bow, and

he showed himself to be quite as well bred as I was, notwithstanding

my lay education. My commons were brought me, and I fell to with a

very catholic appetite. While I was eating, my tongue was mute, but

my eyes glanced by snatches towards this singular character, and

always caught his at the same employment. Liking better to stare

than be stared at, I addressed my speech to him thus: Pray, father,

have we ever by any chance met anywhere but here? You peer at me as

if you scarcely knew whether I was an acquaintance or a stranger. He

answered gravely, If I look at you with fixed attention, it is only

to admire the prodigious variety of adventures which are chronicled

in the features of your face. It should seem, said I, in a joking

tone, as if your reverence was something of a physiognomist. Far

more deeply imbued in science than a mere physiognomist, answered the

monk, I found prophecies on my observations which have never been

belied by the event. My skill in palmistry is no less, and I will

set my oracles against the surest of antiquity, after comparing the

inspection of the hand with that of the face.

Though this old man had all the appearance of profound wisdom, his

talk was so like that of a madman, that I could not help laughing at

him outright. So far from being offended at my want of manners, he

smiled at it, and went on to the following effect, after running his

eye round the coffee-room, to be assured that there were no

listeners: I am not surprised at finding you so prejudiced against

two sciences which pass at this time of day for mere frivolity; the

long and painful study they require disheartens the learned, who turn

their backs upon them, and then swear that they are fables, out of

disgust at having missed their attainment. For my part, I am not to

be frightened by the darkness which envelops them, any more than by

the difficulties which are perpetual stumbling-blocks in the pursuit

of chemical discoveries, and in the marvellous art of transmuting

baser metals into gold.

But I do flatter myself, pursued he, looking steadfastly at me, that

I am addressing a young gentleman of good sense, to whom my systems

will not appear altogether in the light of idle dreams. A sample of

my skill will dispose you better than the most subtile arguments to

pass a favorable judgment on my pretensions. After talking in this

manner he drew from his pocket a phial full of a lively-looking red

liquor, on which he expatiated thus: Here is an elixir which I have

distilled this morning from the juices of certain plants; for I have

employed almost my whole life, like Democritus, in finding out the

properties of simples and minerals. You shall make trial of its

virtue. The wine we are drinking with our supper is very bad;

henceforth it will become excellent. At the same time he put two

drops of his elixir into my bottle, which made my wine more delicious

than the choicest vintages of Spain.

The marvellous strikes the imagination; and when once that faculty is

enlisted, judgment is turned adrift. Delighted with so glorious a

secret, and persuaded that he must have outdeviled the devil before

he could have got at it, I cried out in a paroxysm of admiration, O

reverend father! prithee forgive your servant if he took you at first

for an old blockhead. I now abjure my error. There is no need to

look further to be assured that it depends only on your own will to

turn an iron bar into a wedge of gold in the twinkling of an eye.

How happy should I be were I master of that admirable science!

Heaven preserve you from ever acquiring it, interrupted the old man,

with a deep sigh. You know not, my son, what a fatal possession you

covet. Instead of envying, rather pity me, for having taken such

infinite pains to be made unhappy. I am always disturbed in mind. I

fear a discovery; and then perpetual imprisonment would be the reward

of all my labors. In this apprehension, I lead a vagabond life,

sometimes disguised as a priest or monk, sometimes as a gentleman or

a peasant. Where is the benefit of knowing how to manufacture gold

on such terms? Are not the goods of this world downright misery to

those who cannot enjoy them in tranquillity?

What you say appears to me very sensible, said I to the philosopher.

There is nothing like living at one's ease. You have rid me of all

hankering after the philosopher's stone. I will rest satisfied with

learning from you my future destiny. With all my heart, my good lad,

answered he. I have already made my remarks upon your features; now

let me see your hand. I gave it him with a confidence which will do

my penetration but little credit in the esteem of some readers. He

examined it very attentively, and then pronounced, as in a rapture of

inspiration, Ah! what transitions from pain to pleasure, and from

pleasure to pain! What a whimsical alternation of good and evil

chances! But you have already experienced the largest share of your

allotted reverses. You have but few more tides of misfortune to

stem, and then a great lord will contrive for you an eligible fate,

which shall not be subject to change.

After having assured me that I might depend on his prediction, he

bade me farewell, and went out of the inn, leaving me in deep

meditation on the things I had just heard. There could be no doubt

of the Marquis de Marialva being the great lord in question; and

consequently nothing appeared more within the verge of possibility

than the accomplishment of the oracle. But though there had not been

the slightest likelihood, that would have been no hinderance to

giving the impostor monk unbounded credit, since his elixir had

transmuted my sour incredulity into the most tractable digestion of

his falsehoods. That nothing might be wanting on my side to play

into the hands of my foreboded luck, I determined to attach myself

more closely to the marquis than I had ever done to any of my

masters. Having taken this resolution, I went home in unusually high

spirits: never did foolish woman descend in better humor from the

garret of another foolish woman who had told her fortune.

_CHAPTER X._

_THE MARQUIS DE MARIALVA GIVES A COMMISSION TO GIL BLAS. THAT

FAITHFUL SECRETARY ACQUITS HIMSELF OF IT AS SHALL BE RELATED._

The marquis was not yet returned from his theatrical party, and I

found his upper servants playing at cards in his apartment while they

were waiting for his arrival. I got to be sociable with them, and we

amused ourselves with jocular conversation till two o'clock in the

morning, when our master arrived. He was a little surprised at

seeing me, and said, with an air of kindness, which made me conclude

that he came home very well satisfied with his evening, How is this,

Gil Blas? Are you not gone to bed yet? I answered that I wished to

know first whether he had any commands for me. Probably, replied he,

I may have a commission to give you to-morrow morning; but it will be

time enough then to acquaint you with my wishes. Go to your own

room, and henceforward remember that I dispense with your attendance

at bed-time; my other servants are sufficient for that occasion.

After this hint, which was much to my satisfaction in the main, since

it spared me a slavery which I should have felt very unpleasantly at

times, I left the marquis in his apartment, and withdrew to my

garret. I went to bed. Not being able to sleep, it seemed good to

follow the counsel of Pythagoras, and to examine all the actions of

the day by the test of reason; to reprimand severely what had been

done amiss, and if any thing had been done well, to rejoice in it.

On looking into the day-book of my conscience, the balance was not

sufficiently in my favor to keep me in good humor with myself. I

felt remorse at having lent myself to Laura's imposition. It was in

vain to urge, in self-defence, that I could not, with any decency,

give the lie to a girl who had no object in view but to do me a

pleasure, and that I was in some sort under the necessity of becoming

an accomplice in the fraud. This was a paltry excuse in the darkness

of the night, for I pleaded against myself that at all events the

matter should be pushed no farther, and that it was the summit of

impudence to remain upon the establishment of a nobleman whose

confidence I so ill repaid. In short, after a severe trial, it was

agreed in my own breast, that I was very little short of an arrant

knave.

But to have done with the morality of the act, and pass on to the

probable issue, it was evidently playing a desperate game, to cozen a

man of consequence, who might be enabled, as an instrument for the

visitation of my sins perhaps, to detect the imposture in its very

infancy. A reflection at once so prudent and so virtuous acted as a

refrigerator on my spirits; but visions of pleasure and of interest

soon raised them again above the freezing point. Besides, the

prophecy of the man with the elixir would have been enough to put me

in heart once more. I therefore gave myself up to the indulgence of

the most agreeable fancies. All the rules of arithmetic, from simple

addition to compound interest, were set in array, to cast up what sum

my salary would amount to at the end of ten years' service. Then

there was a large allowance for presents and gratuities from my

master, whose liberal disposition according admirably with my liberal

desires, my imagination grew quite fantastical, and extended the

landmarks of my fortune over innumerable acres of unsubstantial

territory. Sleep overtook me in the calculation, and raised a

magnificent aerial mansion on the estate, where a new race of

grandees was to originate. I got up the next morning about eight

o'clock to go and receive my patron's orders; but as I was opening my

door to go out, what was my surprise at meeting him in his

wrapping-gown and night-cap! He was quite alone. Gil Blas, said he,

on parting with your sister last night, I promised to pass this

morning with her; but an affair of consequence will not admit of my

keeping my word. Go and assure her from me that I am deeply

mortified at the disappointment, but that I shall certainly sup with

her to-night. That is not all, added he, putting a purse into my

hands and a little shagreen case set round with diamonds; carry her

my portrait, and keep this purse of fifty pistoles, which I give you

as a mark of my early-conceived friendship. I took the picture in

one hand, and in the other the purse to which I was so little

entitled. I put my best leg foremost in my way to Laura, muttering

to myself, in the transports of excessive joy, Good! the prophecy is

accomplished in the twinkling of an eye. What a windfall, to be the

brother of a girl so full of beauty and attraction! It is a pity the

credit attached to the relationship is not commensurate with the

lucre and the comfort.

Laura, unlike most women in her profession, had a habit of early

rising. I caught her at her toilet, where, while waiting for her

illustrious foreigner, she was ingrafting on her natural beauty all

the adventitious charms which the cosmetic art could supply. Lovely

Estella, said I, on accosting her, thou absolute loadstone of the

tramontanes, I may now sit down at table with my master, since he has

honored me with a commission which gives me that prerogative, and

which I am just come to fulfil. He cannot have the pleasure of

waiting on you this morning, as he had purposed; but, to make you

amends for the disappointment, he will sup here this evening, and

sends you his picture, which, to all appearance, is enclosed in

something more valuable than itself.

I put the box into her hand at once, and the lively sparkling of the

brilliants which encompassed it made her eyes sparkle and her mouth

water. She opened it out of mere curiosity, looked carelessly at the

painting, as people perform a duty for which they have little relish,

then shut it, and once more fell greedily on the jewelry. Their

beauty made her eloquent, and she said to me, with the smile of a

satirist, These are copies which those mercenary things called

actresses value much more highly than originals.

I next acquainted her that the generous Portuguese, when giving me

charge of the portrait, recommended it to my care by a purse of fifty

pistoles. I beg you will accept of my congratulations, said she;

this nobleman begins where it is even uncommon for others to leave

off. It is to you, my divine creature, answered I, that this present

is owing; the marquis only made it on the score of natural affection.

I could be well pleased, replied she, that he were to make you a

score such presents every day. I cannot express in what extravagance

you are dear to me. From the first moment of our meeting, I became

attached to you by so strong a tie, as time has not been able to

dissolve. When I lost you at Madrid, I did not despair of finding

you again; and yesterday, on your sudden appearance, I received you

like a deodand. In a word, my friend, heaven has created us for one

another. You shall be my husband, but we must get plenty of money in

the first instance. I shall just lend myself out to three or four

silly fellows more, and then you may live like a gentleman on your

means.

I thanked her in the most appropriate terms for such an instance of

extreme condescension on my behalf, and we got insensibly into a

conversation which lasted till noon. At that hour I withdrew, to go

and give my master an account of the manner in which his present was

received. Though Laura had given me no instructions thereupon, I was

not remiss in composing a fine compliment on my way, with which I

meant to launch out on her part; but it was just so much flash in the

pan. For, when I got home the marquis was gone out; and the fates

had decreed that I should never see him more, for reasons which will

be methodically stated in the succeeding chapter.

_CHAPTER XI._

_A THUNDERBOLT TO GIL BLAS._

I repaired to my inn, where meeting with two men of companionable

talents, I dined and sat at table with them till the play began. We

parted; they as their business and desire pointed them, and, for my

own part, my bent was towards the theatre. It may be proper to

observe, by the way, that I had all possible reason to be in a good

humor. The conversation with my chance companions had been joyous in

the extreme; the color of my fortune was gay and animating; yet for

all that I could not help giving way to melancholy, without either

knowing why, or being able to reason myself out of it. It was

doubtless a prophetic warning of the misfortune which threatened me.

As I entered the green-room, Melchior Zapata came up, and told me, in

a low voice, to follow him. He led me to an unfrequented part of the

house, and opened his business thus: Worthy sir, I make it a point of

conscience to give you a very serious warning. You are aware that

the Marquis de Marialva had at first taken a fancy to Narcissa, my

wife; he had even gone so far as to fix a day for trying the relish

of my rib, when that cockatrice Estella contrived to flyblow the bill

of fare, and transfer the banquet to her own untainted charms.

Judge, then, whether an actress can be gulled instead of gulling, and

preserve the sweetness of her temper. My wife has taken it deeply to

heart, and there is no species of revenge to which she would not have

recourse. A fine opportunity has offered. Yesterday, if you

recollect, all our supernumeraries were crowding together to see you.

The deputy candle-snuffer told some of the inferior comedians that he

recollected you perfectly well, and that you might be anything but

Estella's brother.

This report, added Melchior, came to Narcissa's ears to-day: she lost

no time in questioning the author; and that grub of the interior

stood to the whole story. He says that he knew you as Arsenia's

servant, when Estella waited on her at Madrid under the name of

Laura. My wife, full of glee at this discovery, means to acquaint

the Marquis de Marialva with it, when he comes to the play this

evening; so take your measures accordingly. If you are not Estella's

brother in good earnest, I would advise you as a friend, and on the

score of old acquaintance, to make your escape while your skin is

whole. Narcissa, satisfied in her tender mercy with only one victim,

and that of her own sex, has allowed me to give you this notice, that

you may outrun your ill luck.

It would have been waste of words to press the subject farther. I

returned thanks for the caution to this fretter of his hour, who saw

by my terrified aspect that I was not the man to give the deputy

candle-snuffer the lie. I did not feel the least temptation to carry

my dangerous valor such a length. I had not even the heart to go and

bid farewell to Laura, for fear she should insist on my keeping up

the farce. I could easily conceive that so excellent an actress

might get out of the scrape with flying colors; but there seemed to

be nothing for me short of a swingeing castigation; and I was not so

far gone in love as to stand by my sweetheart at the risk of my own

person. I thought of nothing but a precipitate retreat with my

household gods, or rather goods, if such a trumpery collection of

individual property might be called so. I disappeared from the

playhouse in the twinkling of an eye; and, in less time than it would

have taken to confess my sins, was my portmanteau carried off and

safely lodged with a muleteer who was to set out for Toledo at three

o'clock next morning. I could have wished myself already with the

Count de Polan, whose hospitable roof seemed my only safe asylum.

But I was not there yet; and it was impossible to think without dread

of the time remaining to be passed in a town where I was afraid they

would hunt me out without giving me a night's law.

The smell of supper drew me to my inn notwithstanding; though I was

as uneasy as a debtor who knows that a writ is out against him. My

stomach, I believe, was not sufficiently well knit that evening for

my supper to play its part as it should do. The miserable sport of

fear, I watched all the people who came into the coffee-room, and

whenever by chance they carried a gallows in their

physiognomy,--which is no uncommon ensign in such places of

resort,--I shuddered with horrid forebodings. After having supped

the supper of the damned, I got up from table and returned to my

carrier's house, where I threw myself on some clean straw till it was

time to set out.

My patience was well tried during that interval; for a thousand

unpleasant thoughts attacked me in all directions. If I dozed now

and then, the enraged marquis stood before me, pounding Laura's fair

face to a jelly with his fist, and turning her whole house out at

window; or, to come nearer home, I heard him giving directions for my

death under the operation of a cudgel. At such a vision I started

out of my sleep, and waking, which is usually so pleasant after a

frightful dream, inspired me with more horror than even the fictions

of my entranced fancy.

Happily the muleteer delivered me from so dire a purgatory, by coming

to acquaint me that his mules were ready. I was immediately on my

legs, and set out radically cured, for which heaven has my best

thanks, of Laura and the occult sciences. As we got farther from

Grenada, my mind recovered its tone. I began chatting with the

muleteer, laughed at his droll stories, and insensibly lost all my

apprehensions. I slept undisturbed at Ubeda, where we lay the first

night, and on the fourth day we got to Toledo. My first care was to

inform myself of the Count de Polan's residence, whither I repaired

under the full persuasion that he would not suffer me to lodge

elsewhere. But I reckoned without my host. There was no one at home

but a person to take care of the house, who told me that his master

was just gone to the castle of Leyva, having been sent for on account

of Seraphina's dangerous illness.

The count's absence was altogether unexpected: here was no longer any

inducement to stay at Toledo, and all my plans were changed at once.

Finding myself so near Madrid, I resolved to go thither. It came

into my head that I might make my way at court, where talents of the

first order, as I had heard, were not absolutely necessary to fill

situations of the first consequence. On the very next morning I took

advantage of back carriage, to be set down in the renowned capital of

Spain. Fortune took me kindly by the hand, and introduced me to a

higher cast of parts than those I had hitherto filled.

_CHAPTER XII._

_GIL BLAS TAKES LODGINGS IN A READY-FURNISHED HOUSE. HE GETS

ACQUAINTED WITH CAPTAIN CHINCHILLA. THAT OFFICER'S CHARACTER AND

BUSINESS AT MADRID._

On my first arrival at Madrid, I fixed my headquarters in a

lodging-house, where resided, among other persons, an old captain,

who was come from the distant part of New Castille, to solicit a

pension at court, and he thought his claims but too well founded.

His name was Don Annibal de Chinchilla. It was not without much

staring that I saw him for the first time. He was a man about sixty,

of gigantic stature, and of anatomical leanness. His whiskers were

like brushwood, fencing off the two sides of his face as high as his

temples. Besides that, he was short in his reckoning by an arm and a

leg; there was a vacancy for an eye, which Polypheme would have

supplied as he did, had patches of green silk been then in the

fashion; and his features were hacked sufficiently to illustrate a

treatise of geometry. With these exceptions, his configuration was

much like that of another man. As to his mental qualities, he was

not altogether without understanding; and what he wanted in quickness

he made up by gravity. His principles were rigid in the extreme; and

it was his particular boast to be delicate on the point of honor.

After two or three interviews, he distinguished me by his confidence.

I soon got into all his personal history: he related on what

occasions he had left an eye at Naples, an arm in Lombardy, and a leg

in the Low Countries. The most admirable circumstance in all his

narratives of battles and sieges was, that not a single feature of

the swaggerer peeped out; not a word escaped him to his own honor and

glory; though one could readily have forgiven him for making some

little display of the half which was still extant of himself, as a

set-off against the dilapidations which had deducted so largely from

the usual contexture of a man. Officers who return from their

campaigns without a scratch upon their skin, or a love-lock out of

place, are not always so humble in their pretensions.

But he told me that what gave him most uneasiness was the having

wasted a considerable portion of his private fortune on military

objects, so that he had not more than a hundred ducats a year left--a

poor establishment for such a pair of whiskers, a gentleman's

lodging, and an amanuensis to multiply memorials by wholesale. For,

in point of fact, my worthy friend, added he, shrugging his

shoulders, I present one, with a blessing on my endeavors, every day,

and the last meets with the same attention as the first. You would

say that it was an even bet between the prime minister and me, which

of us two shall be tired first, the memorialist or the receiver of

the memorials. I have often had the honor, too, of addressing the

king on the same subject; but the rector and his curate say grace in

the same key; and in the mean time my castle of Chinchilla is falling

to ruin for want of necessary repairs.

Faint heart never won fair lady, said I most wisely to the captain;

you are perhaps on the eve of finding all your marches and

countermarches repaid with usury. I must not flatter myself with

that pleasing expectation, answered Don Annibal. It is but three

days since I spoke to one of the minister's secretaries; and if I am

to trust his representations, I have only to hold up my head and look

big. What, then, did he say to you? replied I. Had those poor dumb

mouths, your wounds, no eloquence to wring a hireling pittance for

their profuse expense of blood? You shall judge for yourself,

resumed Chinchilla. This secretary told me in good plain terms, My

honest friend, you need not boast so much of your zeal and your

fidelity; you have only done your duty in exposing yourself to danger

for your country. Naked glory is the true and honorable recompense

of gallant actions, and as such is the prize at which a Spaniard

aims. You therefore argue on false principles, if you consider the

bounty you solicit as a debt. In case it should be granted, you will

owe that favor exclusively to the royal goodness, which, in its

extreme condescension, requites those of its subjects who have served

the state valiantly. Thus you see, pursued the captain, that if I

had a hundred lives, they are all pledged, and that I am likely to go

back as hungry as I came.

A brave man in distress is the most touching object in this world. I

exhorted him to stick close, and offered to write his memorials out

fair for nothing. I even went so far as to open my purse to him, and

to beg it as a favor that he would draw upon me for whatever he

wanted. But he was not one of those folks who never wait to be asked

twice on such occasions. So much the reverse, that with a

commendable delicacy on the subject, he thanked me for my kindness,

but refused it peremptorily. He afterwards told me that, for fear of

sponging upon any one, he had accustomed himself, by little and

little, to live with such sobriety, that the smallest quantity of

food was sufficient for his subsistence; which was but too true. His

daily fare was confined to vegetables, by dint whereof his component

parts were confined to skin and bone. That he might have no

witnesses how ill he dined, he usually shut himself up in his chamber

at that meal. I prevailed so far with him, however, by repeated

entreaties, as to obtain that we should dine and sup together; then,

undermining his pride by little indirect artifices of compassion, I

ordered more provision and wine than I could consume to my own share.

I pressed him to eat and drink. At first he made difficulties about

it; but in the end there was no resisting my hospitality. After a

time, his modesty becoming fainter as his diet was more flush, he

helped me off with my dinner and lightened my bottle almost without

asking.

One day, after four or five glasses, when his stomach had renewed its

intimacy with a more generous system of feeding, he said to me with

an air of gayety, Upon my word, Signor Gil Blas, you have very

winning ways with you; you make me do just whatever you please.

There is something so hearty in your welcome as to relieve me from

all fear of trespassing on your generous temper. My captain seemed

at that moment so entirely to have got rid of his bashfulness, that

if I had been in the humor to have seized the lucky moment, and to

have pressed my purse once more on his acceptance, I am much mistaken

if he would have refused it. I did not put him to the trial, but

rested satisfied with having made him my messmate, and taken the

trouble not only to copy out his memorials, but to assist him in

their composition. By dint of having written homilies out fair, I

had learned the knack of phraseology, and was become a sort of

author. The old officer, on his side, had some little vanity about

writing well. Both of us thus contending for the prize, the bursts

of eloquence would have done honor to the most celebrated professors

of Salamanca. But it was in vain that we sat on opposite sides of

the table, and drained our genius to the very dregs, to nourish the

flowers of rhetoric in these memorials; you might as well have

planted an orange-grove on the sea-beach. In whatever new light we

placed Don Annibal's services, it was all the same at court, the

connoisseurs were decided about their merit; so that the battered

veteran had no reason to sing the praises of that spirit which leads

officers on to spend their family estates in the service. In the

virulence of his spleen he cursed the planet under which he was born,

and sent Naples, Lombardy, and the Low Countries to the devil.

That his mortification might be pressed down and running over, it

happened to his face one day that a poet, introduced by the Duke of

Alva, having recited a sonnet before the king on the birth of an

infanta, was gratified with a pension of five hundred ducats. I

believe the lop-limbed captain would have gone raving mad at it, if I

had not taken some pains to recompense his spirit. What is the

matter with you? said I, seeing him quite beside himself. There is

nothing in all this which ought to go so terribly against the grain.

Ever since Mount Parnassus swelled above the subject plain, have not

poets pleaded the privilege of laying princes under contribution to

their muse? There is not a crowned head in Christendom that has not

substituted a pensioned laureate for the household fool of less

refined times. And between ourselves, this species of patronage, for

the most part, galloping down full drive to posterity on the saddle

of Pegasus, raises a hue and cry in honor of royal munificence; but

bounty to persons who are lost in a crowd, however deserving, adds

nothing to the bulk or stature of posthumous renown. Augustus must

have drained his treasury by gratuities, and yet how few of the names

on his pension list have come down to us! But distant ages shall be

informed, as we are, in all the hyperbole of poetic diction, that his

benefits descended on Virgil like the rain from heaven, whose drops

arithmetic has no combinations to count, no principles by which to

reason on their number.

But let me talk ever so classically to Don Annibal, there was a

confounded acidity in that sonnet which curdled all the milky

ingredients of his moral composition; it was impossible to chew,

swallow, and digest such food with human organs; and he was fully

determined to give the matter up at once. It seemed right,

nevertheless, by way of playing for his last stake, to present one

more memorial to the Duke of Lerma, and if that failed there was an

end of the game. For this purpose we went together to the prime

minister's. There we met a young man, who, after saluting the

captain, said to him in a tone of affection, My old and dear master,

is it your own self that I see? What business brings you to this

mart of favor? If you have occasion for any one to speak a good word

for you, do not spare my lungs; they are entirely at your service.

How is this, Pedrillo? answered the officer; to hear you talk, it

should seem as if you held some important post in this house. At

least, replied the young man, I have influence enough here to put an

honest rustic like you into the right train. That being the case,

resumed the captain with a smile, I place myself under your

protection. I accept the pledge, rejoined Pedrillo. You have only

to acquaint me with your particular taste, and I engage to give you a

savory slice out of the ministerial pasty.

We had no sooner opened our minds to this young fellow, so full of

kind assurances, than he inquired where Don Annibal resided; then,

promising that we should hear from him on the following day, he

vanished without informing us what he meant to do, or even telling us

whether he belonged to the Duke of Lerma's household. I was curious

to know what this Pedrillo was, whose turn of mind appeared to be so

brisk and active. He is a brave lad, said the captain, who waited on

me some years ago, but finding me out at elbows, went away in search

of a better service. There was no offence to me in all that; it is

very natural to change when one cannot be worse off. The creature is

pleasant enough, not deficient in parts, and happy in a spirit of

intrigue which would wheedle with the devil. But notwithstanding all

his fine pretence, I am not sanguine in my reckoning on the zeal he

has just testified for me. Perhaps, said I, there may be some

plausibility in his designs. Should he be a retainer, for example,

to any of the duke's principal officers, it will be in his power to

serve you. You have lived too long in the world not to know that in

great houses every thing is done by party and cabal; that the masters

are governed by two or three upper servants about their persons, who,

in their turn, are governed by that multitude of menials attendant

upon them.

On the next morning we saw Pedrillo at our breakfast table.

Gentlemen, said he, if I did not explain myself yesterday as to my

means of serving Captain Chinchilla, it was because we were not in a

place where such a communication could be made with safety. Besides,

I was disposed to ascertain whether the thing was feasible, before

you were made parties in it. Understand, then, that I am the

confidential servant of Signor Don Rodrigo de Calderona, the Duke of

Lerma's first secretary. My master, who is much addicted to women,

goes almost every evening to sup with a little Arragonian

nightingale, whom he keeps in a cage near the purlieus of the court.

She is quite a young girl from Albarazin, a most lovely creature.

She has some wit as well as beauty, and sings enchantingly; they call

her the Spanish Siren. I am the bearer of some tender inquiries

every morning, and am just come from her. I have proposed to her to

pass off Signor Don Annibal for her uncle, and the object of the

forgery is to engage her lover in his interests. She is very willing

to lend her aid in the business. Besides some little commission to

which she looks forward on the profits, it will tickle her vanity to

be taken for the niece of a military man.

Signor de Chinchilla looked very grim at this suggestion. He

declared his extreme abhorrence of becoming a party concerned in a

mere swindling trick, and still more of adopting a female adventurer,

no better than she should be, into his family, and thus casting a

stain upon its immaculate purity. It was not only for himself that

he felt all this soreness; there was a recoil of ignominy on his

ancestors, which would lay their honors level with the dust. This

morbid delicacy seemed out of season to Pedrillo, who could not help

expressing his contempt of it thus: You must surely be out of your

wits to take the matter up on that footing. A fine market you bring

your morals to, you dictators from the plough, with your ridiculous

squeamishness! Now you seem a good sensible man, appealing to me as

he spoke these last words. Can you believe your ears when you hear

such scruples advanced? Heaven defend us! At court, of all the

places in the world, to look at morals through a microscope! Let

Fortune come under what haggard form she may, they hug her in their

arms, and swear she is a beauty.

My way of thinking was precisely with Pedrillo, and we dinned it so

stoutly into both the captain's ears, as to make him the Spanish

Siren's uncle against nature and inclination. When we had so far

prevailed over his pride, we all three set about drawing up a new

memorial for the minister, which was revised, with a copious

interlacing of additions and corrections. I then wrote it out fair,

and Pedrillo carried it to the Arragonian chantress, who that very

evening put it into the hands of Signor Don Rodrigo, telling her

story so artlessly that the secretary, really supposing her the

captain's niece, promised to take up his case. A few days afterwards

we reaped the fruits of our little project. Pedrillo came back to

our house with the lofty air of a benefactor. Good news, said he to

Chinchilla. The king is going to make a new grant of officers,

places, and pensions; nor will your name be forgotten in the list.

But I am specially commissioned to inquire what present you purpose

making to the Spanish Siren, for the piper must be paid. As to

myself, I vow and protest that I will not take a farthing; the

pleasure of having contributed to patch up my old master's broken

fortunes is more to me than all the ingots of the Indies. But it is

not precisely so with our nymph of Albarazin: she has a little Jewish

blood to plead when the Christian precept of loving her neighbor as

herself is preached up to her. She would pick her own natural

father's pocket; so judge you whether she would be above making a

bargain with a travelling uncle.

She has only to name her own terms, answered Don Annibal. Whatever

my pension may be, she shall have the third of it annually if she

pleases; I will pledge my word for it; and that proportion ought to

satisfy her craving, if his Catholic Majesty had settled his whole

exchequer on me. I would as soon take your word as your bond, for my

own part, replied the nimble-footed messenger of Don Rodrigo; I know

that it will stand the assay; but you have to deal with a little

creature who knows herself, and naturally supposes that she knows all

the rest of the world by the same token. Besides, she would like

better to take it in the lump; two thirds to be paid down, in ready

money. Why, now how the devil does she mean that I should get the

wherewithal? bawled the captain, in a quandary. Does she take me for

an auditor of public accounts, or treasurer to a charity? You cannot

have made her acquainted with my circumstances. Yes, but I have,

replied Pedrillo; she knows very well that you are poorer than Job;

after what she has heard from me, she could think no otherwise. But

do not make yourself uneasy; my brain is never at a loss for an

expedient. I know an old scoundrel of a usurer, who will take ten

per cent. if he can get no more. You must assign your first year's

pension to him, in acknowledgment for a like valuable consideration

from him, which you will in point of fact receive, only deducting the

above-mentioned interest. As to security, the lender will take your

castle at Chinchilla, for want of better; there will be no dispute

about that.

The captain declared his readiness to accept the terms, in case of

his being so fortunate as to possess any beneficial interest in the

good things to be given away the next morning. It happened

accordingly. He got a government with a pension of three hundred

pistoles. As soon as the news came, he signed and sealed as

required, settled his little concerns in town, and went off again for

New Castille with a balance of some few pistoles in his favor.

_CHAPTER XIII._

_GIL BLAS COMES ACROSS HIS DEAR FRIEND FABRICIO AT COURT. GREAT

ECSTASY ON BOTH SIDES. THEY ADJOURN TOGETHER, AND COMPARE NOTES; BUT

THEIR CONVERSATION IS TOO CURIOUS TO BE ANTICIPATED._

I had contracted a habit of going to the royal palace every morning,

where I lounged away two or three good hours in seeing the good

people pass to and fro; but their aspect was less imposing there than

in other places, as the lesser stars turn pale in the presence of the

sun.

One day, as I was walking back and fore, and strutting about the

apartments, making about as wise a figure there as my neighbors, I

spied out Fabricio, whom I had left at Valladolid in the service of a

hospital director. It surprised me not a little that he was chatting

familiarly with the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Marquis of Santa

Cruz. Those two noblemen, if my senses did not deceive me, were

listening with admiration to his prattle. To crown the whole, he was

as handsomely dressed as a grandee.

Surely I must be mistaken! thought I. Can this possibly be the son

of Nunez the barber? More likely it is some young courtier who bears

a strong resemblance to him. But my suspense was of no long

duration. The party broke up, and I accosted Fabricio. He knew me

at once; took me by the hand, and after pressing through the crowd to

get out of the precincts, said, with a hearty greeting, My dear Gil

Blas, I am delighted to see you again. What are you doing at Madrid?

Are you still at service? Some place about the court, perhaps? How

do matters stand with you? Let me into the history of all that has

happened to you since your precipitate flight from Valladolid. You

ask a great many questions in a breath, replied I; and we are not in

a fit place for story-telling. You are in the right, answered he; we

shall be better at home. Come, I will show you the way; it is not

far hence. I am quite my own master, with all my comforts about me;

perfectly easy as to the main chance, with a light heart and a happy

temper; because I am determined to see every thing on the bright side.

I accepted the proposal, and Fabricio escorted me. We stopped at a

house of magnificent appearance, where he told me that he lived.

There was a court to cross; on one side it had a grand staircase

leading to a suit of state apartments, and on the other a small

flight, dark and narrow, whither we betook ourselves to a residence

elevated in a different sense from what he had boasted. It consisted

of a single room, which my contriving friend had divided into four by

deal partitions. The first served as an antechamber to the second,

where he lay; of the third he made his closet, of the last his

kitchen. The chamber and antechamber were papered with maps, and

many a sheet of philosophical discussion; nor was the furniture by

any means unsuitable to the hangings. There was a large brocade bed

much the worse for wear; tawdry old chairs with coarse yellow

coverings, fringed with Grenada silk of the same color; a table with

gilt feet, and a cloth over it that once aspired to be red, bordered

with tinsel and embroidery tarnished by that old corroder, time; with

an ebony cabinet, ornamented with figures in a clumsy taste of

sculpture. Instead of a convenient desk, he had a small table in his

closet; and his library was made up with some few books, and a great

many bundles of paper arranged on shelves one above the other the

whole length of the wall. His kitchen, too modest to put the rest of

the establishment out of countenance, exhibited a frugal assortment

of earthenware and other necessary implements of cookery.

Fabricio, when he had allowed me leisure to philosophize on his

domestic arrangements, begged to know my opinion of his apartments

and his housekeeping, and whether I was not enchanted with them.

Yes, beyond all manner of doubt, answered I, with a roguish smile.

You must have applied your wits to a good purpose at Madrid, to have

got so well accoutred. Of course you have some post. Heaven

preserve me from any thing of the sort! replied he. My line of life

is far above all political situations. A man of rank, to whom this

house belongs, has given me a room in it, whence I have contrived to

piece out a suit of four, fitted up in such taste as you may see. I

devote my time to no employments but what are just to my fancy, and

never feel what it is to want. Explain yourself more intelligibly,

said I, interrupting him. You set me all agog to be let into your

little arrangements. Well then! said he, I will rid you of that

devil curiosity at once. I have commenced author, have plunged

headlong into the ocean of literature; verse and prose run equally

glib; in short, I am a jack of all trades to the muses.

What! you bound in solemn league and covenant to Apollo? exclaimed I,

with most intolerable laughter. Nothing under a prophet could ever

have anticipated this. I should have been less surprised at any

other transformation. What possible delights have you had the

ingenuity to detect in the rugged landscape of Parnassus? It should

seem as if the laborers there have a very poor taking in civil life,

and feed on a coarse diet without sauce. Out upon you! cried he, in

dudgeon at the hint. You are talking of those paltry authors, whose

works and even their persons are under the thumb of booksellers and

players. Is it any wonder that writers under such circumstances

should be held cheap? But the good ones, my friend, are on a better

footing in the world; and I think it may be affirmed, vanity apart,

that my name is to be found in their list. Questionless, said I,

talents like yours are convertible to every purpose; compositions

from such a pen are not likely to be insipid. But I am on the rack

to know how this rage for fencing with inky weapons could have seized

thee.