The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane - Alain René le Sage (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗
- Author: Alain René le Sage
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I knew what I was about in the art of dressing meat. Dame
Leonarda, with whom I had served my time, might have passed for a
very decent plain cook; but a mere turnspit to dame Jacintha. The
latter might almost have borne away the bell from the archbishop
of Toledo’s man. She was mistress of everything; gravy soups, of
the most delicious texture and relish; and, for made dishes, she
could season them up or soften them down to the most delicate or
voluptuous palate. At dinner-time we returned to his reverence’s
apartment. While I was arranging the grand concern close by his
arm-chair, the lady of all work crammed a napkin under the old
boy’s chin, and pinned it behind his back. Without losing a
moment, in marched I with a stew, fit to be set before the first
gourmand in Madrid, and two courses, to have tickled the gills of
a viceroy, only that Dame Jacintha had touched the spice-box with
discretion, for fear of exasperating the gout. At the first
glimpse of this goodly mess, my old master, whom I conceived to
have lost the use of his limbs, made me to understand that his
arms were exempted from the interdict He availed himself of their
assistance, to get clear of his pillow and cushions, and
proceeded gaily to the attack. His hand shook, to be sure; but
somehow or other it contrived to do its duty. He sent it
backwards and forwards fast enough; though it brought but half
its cargo to the landing-place at a lading: the table cloth and
napkin took toll. I carried off the soup when he had done, and
brought in a partridge flanked by two roast quails, which Dame
Jacintha cut up for him. She took care to make him take a good
draught of wine, a little lowered at proper intervals, out of a
large, deep, silver cup, which she held to his mouth, as if he
had been an infant. He winged the partridge, and came down slap-dash upon all the rest of the dishes. When he had done cramming,
that saint of the saucepan unpinned his napkin, reinstated his
pillow and cushions; then, leaving him composed in his arm-chair
to the enjoyment of his usual nap after dinner, we took away, and
demolished the remainder with appetites worthy of our master.
The dinner of to-day was the ordinary bill of fare. Our canon
played the best knife and fork in the chapter. But the supper was
a mere bauble; seldom more than a chicken and a little
confectionery. I larded my inside in this house, and led a good
easy life. There was but one awkward circumstance; and that was
sitting up with my master, to save the expense of a nurse.
Besides a strangury, which kept him on the fidget ten times in an
hour, he was very much given to perspire; and in that event, I
shifted him. Gil Blas, said he, on the second night, you are an
active, clever fellow; I foresee that we shall jog on very well
together. I only just give you a hint to keep in with Dame
Jacintha; the girl has been about me for these fifteen years, and
manages all my little matters; she comforts my outward man, and I
cannot do too much for her. For that reason, you are to know,
that she is more to me than all my family. There is my nephew, my
own sister’s son; why, I have turned him out of doors, only to
please her. He had no regard for the poor lass: and so far from
giving her credit for all her little assiduities, the saucy
rascal swore she did not care a farthing for me! But now-a-days,
young people think virtue and gratitude all a farce. Heaven be
praised, I am rid of the varlet. What claim has blood, in
comparison with unquestionable attachment? I am influenced by a
give-and-take principle in my connections. You are right, sir,
replied I; gratitude ought to be the first thing, and natural
affection the last. Ay! resumed he; and my will shall be a
comment on that text. My housekeeper shall be residuary legatee;
and you shall have a corner in a codicil, if you go on as well as
you have begun. The footman I turned off yesterday has lost a
good legacy, by not knowing where to hit the right nail on the
head. If the blockhead had not obliged me, by his ill behaviour,
to send him packing, I would have made a man of him: but the
beggar on horseback gave himself airs to Dame Jacintha! Then
master lazy-bones did not like sitting up! I might pass the night
as I could, provided he had no trouble with me. Oh! the unfeeling
scoundrel! exclaimed I, in the true spirit of Fabricio, he was
not a man to be about so good a master. The lad for your money
should be a humble, but confidential friend; he should not make a
toil of what ought to be a pleasure, but think nothing of going
through fire and water for your ease.
These professions were not lost upon the licentiate. Neither were
my assurances of due submission to Dame Jacintha’s authority less
acceptable. Puffing myself off for a servant, who was not afraid
of work, I got through my business as cheerfully as I could. I
never complained of my nursery. Though to be sure it was irksome
enough; and if the legacy had not settled my stomach, I should
have sickened at the nature of my employment. It is true I got
some hours’ rest during the day. The housekeeper, to do her
justice, was kind enough to me; owing to the insinuating manner
in which I wormed myself into her good graces. Suppose me at
table, with her and her niece In�silla! I changed their plates,
filled their glasses, never thought of my own dinner before they
had everything they wanted. This was the way to thrive in their
esteem. One day when Dame Jacintha was gone to market, finding
myself alone with In�silla, I began to make myself agreeable.
Were her father and mother alive? Oh! no, answered she; they have
been dead this long, long time; for my good aunt says they have,
and I have never seen them. I religiously believed the little
innocent, though her answer was not of the clearest; and she got
into such an humour of talking, as to tell me more than I wanted
to know. She informed me, or rather I inferred it from her
artless simplicity, that her good aunt had a good friend, who
lived likewise with an old canon. The temporalities of the church
were under his administration; and these lucky domestics reckoned
upon entwining the spoils of their masters round the pillars of
the hymeneal temple, into whose sanctuary they had penetrated by
anticipation. Dame Jacintha, as I have said before, though a
little stricken in years, had still some bloom. To be sure, she
spared no pains to cherish it: besides daily evacuations, she
took plentiful doses of all-powerful jelly. She got her sleep in
the night too, while I sat up with my master. But what perhaps
contributed most to the freshness of this everlasting flower, was
an issue in each leg, of which I should never have known, but for
that blab In�silla.
CH. II. — The canon’s illness; his treatment; the consequence;
the legacy to Gil Blas.
I STAID three months with the Licentiate S�dillo, without
complaining of bad nights. At the end of that time he fell sick.
The distemper was a fever; and it inflamed the gout For the first
time in his life, which had been long, he called in a physician.
Doctor Sangrado was sent for; the Hippocrates of Valladolid. Dame
Jacintha was for sending for the lawyer first, and touched that
string; but the patient thought it was time enough, and had a
little will of his own upon some points. Away I went therefore
for Doctor Sangrado; and brought him with me. A tall, withered,
wan executioner of the sisters three, who had done all their
justice for at least these forty years! This learned forerunner
of the undertaker had an aspect suited to his office: his words
were weighed to a scruple; and his jargon sounded grand in the
ears of the uninitiated. His arguments were mathematical
demonstrations: and his opinions had the merit of originality.
After studying my master’s symptoms, he began with medical
solemnity: The question here is, to remedy an obstructed
perspiration. Ordinary practitioners, in this case, would follow
the old routine of salines, diuretics, volatile salts, sulphur
and mercury; but purges and sudorifics are a deadly practice!
Chemical preparations are edged tools in the hands of the
ignorant. My methods are more simple, and more efficacious. What
is your usual diet? I live pretty much upon soups, replied the
canon, and eat my meat with a good deal of gravy. Soups and
gravy! exclaimed the petrified doctor. Upon my word, it is no
wonder you are ill. High living is a poisoned bait; a trap set by
sensuality, to cut short the days of wretched man. We must have
done with pampering our appetites: the more insipid, the more
wholesome. The human blood is not a gravy! Why then you must give
it such a nourishment as will assimilate with the particles of
which it is composed. You drink wine, I warrant you? Yes, said
the licentiate, but diluted. Oh! finely diluted, I dare say,
rejoined the physician. This is licentiousness with a vengeance!
A frightful course of feeding! Why, you ought to have died years
ago. How old are you? I am in my sixty-ninth year, replied the
canon. So I thought, quoth the practitioner, a premature old age
is always the consequence of in temperance. If you had only drank
clear water all your life, and had been contented with plain
food, boiled apples for instance, you would not have been a
martyr to the gout, and your limbs would have performed their
functions with lubricity. But I do not despair of setting you on
your legs again, provided you give yourself up to my management.
The licentiate promised to be upon his good behaviour.
Sangrado then sent me for a surgeon of his own choosing, and took
from him six good porringers of blood, by way of a beginning, to
remedy this obstinate obstruction. He then said to the surgeon;
Master Martin Onez, you will take as much more three hours hence,
and to-morrow you will repeat the operation. It is a mere vulgar
error, that the blood is of any use in the system; the faster you
draw it off the better. A patient has nothing to do but to keep
himself quiet; with him, to live is merely not to die; he has no
more occasion for blood than a man in a trance; in both cases,
life consists exclusively in pulsation and respiration. When the
doctor had ordered these frequent and copious bleedings, he added
a drench of warm water at very short intervals, maintaining that
water in sufficient quantities was the grand secret in the
materia medica. He then took his leave, telling Dame Jacintha and
me, with an air of confidence, that he would answer for the
patient’s life, if his system was fairly pursued. The
housekeeper, though protesting secretly against this new
practice, bowed to his superior authority. In fact, we set on the
kettles in a hurry; and, as the physician had desired us above
all things to give him enough, we began with pouring down two or
three pints at as many gulps. An hour after we beset him again;
then, returning to the attack time after time, we fairly poured a
deluge into his poor stomach The surgeon,
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