The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane - Alain René le Sage (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

to find with it is, that the kitchen smells too

strongly of the hierarchy; a lay Christian should not live like

an archbishop; besides that, there are three times as many

servants as are necessary, and consequently you are put to an

expense at once enormous and useless.

 

Had you accepted the annuity of two thousand ducats which we

offered you at Madrid, said Don Caesar, we should have thought it

enough to give you the mansion furnished as it is: but you know,

you refused it; and we felt it but right to do what we have done

as an equivalent. Your bounty has been too lavish, answered I:

the gift of the estate was the utmost limit to which it should

have been extended, and that was more than sufficient to crown my

largest wishes. But to say nothing about what it has cost you to

keep up so great and expensive an establishment, I declare to you

most solemnly that these people stand in my way, and are a great

annoyance. In one word, gentlemen, either take back your boon, or

give me leave to enjoy it in my own way. I pronounced these last

words so much as if I was in earnest, that the father and son,

not meaning to lay me under any unpleasant restraint, at length

gave me their permission to manage my household as it should seem

expedient to my better judgment.

 

I was thanking them very kindly for having granted me that

privilege, without which a dukedom would have been but splendid

slavery, when Don Alphonso interrupted me by saying: My dear Gil

Blas, I will introduce you to a lady who will be extremely happy

to see you. Thus preparing me for the interview, he took me by

the hand and led the way to Seraphina s apartment, who set up a

scream of joy on recognizing me. Madam, said the governor, I

flatter myself that the visit of our friend Santillane at

Valencia is not less acceptable to you than myself. On that head,

answered she, he may rest confidently assured; time has not

obliterated the remembrance of the service which he once rendered

me and to that must be added a new debt of gratitude incurred on

the score of your obligations. I told the governor’s lady that I

was already too well requited for the danger which I had shared

in common with her deliverers, in exposing my life for her sake:

compliments to the like effect were bandied about for some time

on both sides, when Don Alphonso motioned to quit Seraphina’s

room. We then went back to Don Caesar, whom we found in the

saloon with a fashionable party, who were come to dinner.

 

All these gentleman were introduced, and paid their compliments

to me in the politest manner; nor did their attentions relax in

assiduity, when Don Caesar told them that I had been one of the

Duke of Lerma’s principal secretaries. In all likelihood several

of them might not be unacquainted that Don Alphonso had been

promoted to the government of Valencia by my interest, for

political secrets are seldom kept. However that might be, while

we were at table, the conversation principally turned on the new

cardinal. Some of the company either were, or affected to be, his

unqualified admirers, while others allowed his merit upon the

whole, but thought it had been rather overrated. I plainly saw

through their design of drawing me on to enlarge on the subject

of his eminence, and to gratify their taste for scandal with

court anecdotes at his expense. I could have been well enough

pleased to have delivered my real sentiments on his character,

but I kept my tongue within my teeth, and thereby passed in the

estimation of the guests for a close, confidential, politic,

trustworthy young statesman.

 

The party respectively retired home after dinner to take their

usual nap, what Don Caesar and his son, yielding to a similar

inclination, shut themselves up in their apartments.

 

For my own part, full of impatience to see a town which I had so

often heard extolled for its beauty, I went out of the governor’s

palace with the intention of walking through the streets. At the

gate a man accosted me with the following address: Will Signor de

Santillane allow me to take the liberty of paying my respects to

him? I asked him who and what he was. I am Don Caesar’s valet-de-chambre, answered he, but was one of his ordinary footmen during

your stewardship; I used to make my court to you every morning,

and you used to take a great deal of notice of me. I regularly

gave you intelligence of what was passing in the house. Do you

recollect my apprising you one day that the village surgeon of

Leyva was privately admitted into Dame Lorenza Sephora’s

bedchamber? It is a circumstance which I have by no means

forgotten, replied I. But now that we are talking of that

formidable duenna, what is become of her? Alas! resumed he, the

poor creature moped and dwindled after your departure, and at

length gave up the ghost, more to the grief of Seraphina than of

Don Alphonso, who seemed to consider her death as no great evil.

 

Don Caesar’s valet-de-chambre, having thus acquainted me with

Sephora’s melancholy end, made an humble apology for having

presumed to stop my walk, and then left me to continue my

progress. I could not help paying the tribute of a sigh to the

memory of that ill-fated duenna; and her decease affected me the

more, because I taxed myself with that melancholy catastrophe,

though a moment’s reflection would have convinced me, that the

grave owed its precious prey to the inroads of her cancer rather

than to the cruel charms of my person.

 

I looked with an eye of pleasure upon everything worth notice in

the town. The archbishop’s marble palace feasted my eyes with all

the magnificence of architecture; nor were the piazzas which

surrounded the exchange much inferior in commercial grandeur; but

a large building at a distance, with a great crowd standing

before the doors, attracted all my attention. I went nearer, to

ascertain the reason why so great a concourse of both sexes was

collected, and was soon let into the secret by reading the

following inscription in letters of gold on a tablet of black

marble over the door: La Posada de los Representantes [The

theatre] . The playbills announced for that day a new tragedy,

never performed, and gave the name of Don Gabriel Triaquero as

the author.

 

CH. V. — Gil Blas goes to the play, and sees a new tragedy. The

success of the piece. The public taste at Valencia.

 

I STOPPED for some minutes before the door, to make my remarks on

the people who were going in. There were some of all sorts and

sizes. Here was a knot of genteel-looking fellows, whose tailors

at least had done justice to their fashionable pretensions; there

a mob of ill-favoured and ill-mannered mortals, in a garb to

identify vulgarity. To the right was a bevy of noble ladies,

alighting from their carriages to take possession of their

private boxes; to the left a tribe of female traders in

lubricity, who came to sell their wares in the lobby. This mixed

concourse of spectators, as various in their minds as in their

faces, gave me an itching inclination to increase their number.

Just as I was taking my check, the governor and his lady drove

up. They spied me out in the crowd, and having sent for me, took

me with them to their box, what I placed myself behind them, in

such a position as to converse at my ease with either.

 

The theatre was filled with spectators from the ceiling

downwards, the pit thronged almost to suffocation, and the stage

crowded with knights of the three military orders. Here is a full

house! said I to Don Alphonso. You are not to consider that as

anything extraordinary, answered he; the tragedy now about to be

produced is from the pen of Don Gabriel Triaquero, the most

fashionable dramatic writer of his day. Whenever the playbill

announces any novelty from this favourite author, the whole town

of Valencia is in a bustle. The men as well as the women talk

incessantly on the subject of the piece: all the boxes are taken;

and, on the first night of performance, there is a risk of broken

limbs in getting in, though the price of admission is doubled,

with the exception of the pit, which is too authoritative a part

of the house for the proprietors to tamper with its patience.

What a paroxysm of partiality! said I to the governor. This eager

curiosity of the public, this hot-headed impatience to be present

at the first representation of Don Gabriel’s pieces, gives me a

magnificent idea of that poet’s genius.

 

At this period of our conversation the curtain rose. We

immediately left off talking, to fix our whole attention on the

stage. The applauses were rapturous even at the prologue: as the

performance advanced, every sentiment and situation, nay, almost

every line of the piece called forth a burst of acclamation; and

at the end of each act the clapping of hands was so loud and

incessant, as almost to bring the building about our ears. After

the dropping of the curtain, the author was pointed out to me,

going about from box to box, and with all the modesty of a

successful poet, submitting his head to the imposition of those

laurels, which the genteeler, and especially the fairer part of

the audience had prepared for his coronation.

 

We returned to the governor’s palace, where we were met by a

party of three or four gentlemen. Besides these mere amateurs,

there were two veteran authors of considerable eminence in their

line, and a gentleman of Madrid with tolerably fair claims to

critical authority and judgment They had all been at the play.

The new piece was the only topic of conversation during supper-time. Gentlemen, said a knight of St James, what do you think of

this tragedy? Has it not every claim to the character of a

finished work? Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn, a hand

to touch the true chords of pity, and sweep the lyre of poetry;

requisites how rarely, and yet how admirably united! In a word,

it is the performance of a person mixing in the higher circles of

society. There can be no possible difference of opinion on that

subject, said a knight of Alcantara. The piece is full of strokes

which Apollo himself might have aimed, and of perplexities

contrived so that none but the author himself could have

unravelled them. I appeal to that acute and ingenious stranger,

added he, addressing his discourse to the Castilian gentleman; he

looks to me like a good judge, and I will lay a wager that he is

on my side of the question. Take care how you stake on an

uncertainty, my worthy knight, answered the gentleman with a

sarcastic smile. I am not of your provincial school; we do not

pass our judgment so hastily at Madrid. Far from sentencing a

piece on its first representation, we are jealous of its apparent

merit while aided by scenic deception; our fancies and our

feelings may be carried away for the moment, but our serious

decision is suspended till we have read the work; and the most

common result of its appeal to the press is a defalcation from

its powers of pleasing on the stage.

 

Thus you perceive, pursued he, that it is our practice to examine

a work of genius closely before we stamp on it the mark of a

stock piece: its author’s fame, let it ring as