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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There might we have foddered for an age, and at last have been
turned out to grass in the galleys, if on the morrow Signor
Manuel Ordonnez had not got wind of our affair, and determined to
release Fabricio; which he could not do without making a general
gaol delivery. He was a man of the first credit in the town: his
interest was exerted for us, and partly by his own influence, and
partly by that of his friends, he obtained our enlargement at the
end of three days. But the period of delivery is always moulting
time with gaol birds; the candlestick, the necklace, the ear-rings, my ring, and the ruby, all was left behind. One could not
help repeating those excellent lines of Virgil, beginning with
Sic vos non vobis.
As soon as we were at liberty we returned to our masters. Doctor
Sangrado received me kindly; My poor Gil Blas, said he, it was
but this morning I was acquainted with thy misfortune. I was just
setting about an active canvass for thee. We must derive comfort
from adversity, my friend, and attach ourselves more than ever to
the practice of physic. I affirmed that to be my intention; and
in truth I laid about me. Far from wanting employment, it
happened by a kind providence, as my master had foretold, to be a
very sickly season. The smallpox and a malignant fever took
alternate possession of the town and the suburbs. All the
physicians in Valladolid had their share of business, and we not
the least. We saw eight or ten patients a day; so that the kettle
was kept on the simmer, and the blood in the action of
transpiring. But things will happen cross; they died to a man,
either by our fault or their own. If their case was hopeless, we
were not to blame; and if it was not hopeless, they were. Three
visits to a patient was the length of our tether. About the
second, we sometimes ran foul of the undertaker; or when we had
been more fortunate than usual, the patient had got no further
than the point of death. As I was but a young physician, not yet
hardened to the trade of an assassin, I grieved over the
melancholy issue of my own theory and practice. Sir, said I, one
evening to Doctor Sangrado, I call heaven to witness on the spot
that I have never strayed from your infallible method; and yet I
have never saved a patient: one would think they died out of
spite, and were on the other side of the great medical question.
This very day I came across two of them, going into the country
to be buried. My good lad, replied he, my experience nearly comes
to the same point. It is but seldom I have the pleasure of curing
my kind and partial friends. If I had less confidence in my
principles, I should think my prescriptions had set their faces
against the work they were intended to perform. If you will take
a hint, sir, replied I, we had better vary our system. Let us
give, by way of experiment, chemical preparations to our
patients; the worst they can do is to tread in the steps of our
pure dilutions and our phlebotomizing evacuations. I would
willingly give it a trial, rejoined he, if it were a matter of
indifference, but I have published on the practice of bleeding
and the use of drenches: would you have me cut the throat of my
own fame as an author! Oh! you are in the right, resumed I; our
enemies must not gain this triumph over us; they would say that
you were out of conceit with your own systems, and would ruin
your reputation for consistency. Perish the people, perish rather
our nobility and clergy! But let us go on in the old path. After
all, our brethren of the faculty, with all their tenderness about
bleeding, have no patent for longevity any more than ourselves;
and we may set off their drugs against our specifics.
We went on working double tides, and did so much execution, that
in less than six weeks we made as many widows and orphans as the
siege of Troy. The plague must have got into Valladolid by the
number of funerals. Day after day came some father or other to
know what was become of his son, who was last seen in our hands;
or else a stupid fellow of an uncle, who had a foolish hankering
after a deceased nephew. With respect to the nephews and sons, on
whose uncles and fathers we had equalized our system of
destruction, they thought that least said was soonest mended.
Husbands were altogether on their good behaviour, they would not
split a hair about the loss of a wife or two. The real sufferers
to whose reproaches we were exposed, were sometimes quite savage
in their grief; without being mealy-mouthed in their expressions,
they called us blockheads and assassins. I was concerned at their
bad language; but my master, who was up to every circumstance,
listened to their abuse with the utmost indifference. Yet I might
have grown as callous as himself to popular reproach, if heaven,
interposing its shield between the invalids of Valladolid and one
of their scourges, had not providentially raised up an incident
to disgust me with medicine, which from the outset had been
disgusted with me.
The idle fellows about town assembled every day in our
neighbourhood for a game at tennis. Among the number was one of
those professed bullies who set up for great Dons, and are the
complete cocks of the tennis-court. He was a Biscayan, and
assumed the title of Don Roderic de Mondragon. His age might be
about thirty. His size was somewhat above the common, but he was
lean and bony. Besides two sparkling little eyes rolling about in
his head, and throwing out defiance against all bystanders, a
very broad nose came in between a pair of red whiskers, which
turned up like a hook as high as the temples. His phraseology was
so rough and uncouth that the very sound of his voice would throw
a quiet man into an ague. This tyrant over both the rackets and
the game was lord paramount in all disputes between the players;
and there was no appeal from his decisions, but at the risk of
receiving a challenge the next day. Precisely as I have drawn
Signor Don Roderic, whom the Don in the foreground of his titles
could never make a gentleman, Signor Don Roderic was sweet upon
the mistress of the tennis-court. She was a woman of forty, in
good circumstances, as charming as forty can well be, just
entering on the second year of her widowhood. I know not how he
made himself agreeable; certainly not by his exterior
recommendations, but probably by that within which passeth show.
However that might be, she took a fancy to him, and began to turn
her thoughts towards the holy state of matrimony; but while that
great event was in agitation, for the punishment of her sins she
was taken with a malignant fever, and with me for a physician.
Had the disorder been ever so slight, my practice would have made
a serious job of it. At the expiration of four days there was not
a dry eye in the tennis-court. The mistress joined the outward-bound colony of my patients, and her family administered to her
effects. Don Roderic, distracted at the loss of his mistress, or
rather disappointed of a good establishment, was not satisfied
with fretting and fuming at me, but swore he would run me through
the body, or even frown me into a nonentity. A good-natured
neighbour apprised me of this vow, with a caution to keep at
home, for fear of coming across this devil of a fellow. This
warning, though taken in good part, was a source of anxiety and
apprehension. I was eternally fancying the enraged Biscayan
laying siege to the outworks of my citadel. There was no getting
a moment’s respite from alarm. This circumstance weaned me from
the practice of medicine, and I thought of nothing but
deliverance from my horrors. On went my embroidered suit once
more. Taking leave of my master, who did all he could to detain
me, I got out of town with the dawn, not heedless of that
terrible Don Roderic, who might waylay me on the road.
CH. VI. — His route from Valladolid, with a description of his
fellow-traveller.
I TRUDGED on at a great rate, and looked behind from time to
time, to see if that dreadful Biscayan was not following me. My
imagination was so engrossed by the fellow, that he haunted me in
every tree and bush; my heart was in my mouth for fear at every
foot-fall. But I took courage again at the distance of about a
league, and went on more gently towards Madrid, whither I
proposed directing my steps. I had no attachment to Valladolid.
All my regret was at tearing myself from Fabricio, my dear
Pylades, of whom I had not so much as taken my leave. It was no
grievance to give up physic; on the contrary, I prayed heaven to
forgive me for having tampered with it. Yet I did not count over
the contents of my purse with less pleasure, because they were
the wages of murder. In this I took after those ladies who retire
with a fortune to lead pious lives, and think it hard if they may
not fatten religiously on the hard earnings of their libertine
profession. I had, in rials, somewhere about the value of five
ducats, and this was the sum total of my property. With these I
designed repairing to Madrid, where I had no doubt of finding a
good service. Besides, I wished above all things to be in that
magnificent city, the boasted epitome of the world and all its
wonders.
While I was recollecting what I had heard of it, and enjoying
beforehand the pleasures it affords, I heard the voice of a man
coming after me, and singing till he had scraped his throat. He
had a wallet on his back, a guitar suspended from his neck, and a
long sword by his side. He got on at such a rate, as soon to
overtake me. Who should it be but one of the two journeymen
barbers with whom I had been in gaol for the adventure of the
ring. We knew one another at once, though we had shifted our
dresses, and were in a thousand marvels at meeting so
unexpectedly on the highway. If I testified my delight at having
such a fellow-traveller, he seemed on his side to feel an excess
of rapture at the renewal of our acquaintance. I told him why I
had left Valladolid, and he trusted his own secret to me in
return, by stating himself to have had a little brush with his
master, on which they had taken an everlasting leave of one
another. Had it been my pleasure, continued he, to have taken up
my abode longer in Valladolid, ten shops would take me in for one
that would have turned me out; since, vanity apart, I may safely
say there is not a barber in all Spain better qualified to shave
all sorts of beards, with the grain or against the grain, and to
curl a pair of whiskers. But I could no longer fight against a
hankering after my native place, whence I departed full ten years
since. I wish to inhale a little of my own country air, and to
learn the present situation of my family. I shall be among them
the day after to-morrow, at a place called Olm�do, a populous
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