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

class="calibre1">brushed up his own learning, which had not been pursued in a very

scholastic manner; and, by dint of application, he got at last to

read his breviary out of hand, which he had never been able to do

before. He would have been very glad to have taught me Latin, to

save expense, but, alas! poor Gil Perez! he had never skimmed the

first principles of it in the whole course of his life. I should

not wonder if he was the most ignorant member of the chapter,

though on a subject involving as many possibilities as there were

canons, I presume not to pledge myself for anything like

certainty. To be sure, I have heard it suggested, that he did not

gain his preferment altogether by his learning: but that he owed

it exclusively to the gratitude of some good nuns whose discreet

factor he had been, and who had credit enough to procure him the

order of priesthood without the troublesome ceremony of an

examination.

 

He was obliged therefore to place me under the correction of a

master, so that I was sent to Doctor Godinez, who had the

reputation of being the most accomplished pedant of Oviedo. I

profited so well under his instructions, that by the end of five

or six years I could read a Greek author or two, and had no very

inadequate conception of the Latin poets. Besides my classical

studies, I applied to logic, which enabled me to become an expert

arguer. I now fell in love with discussions of all kinds to such

an excess, that I stopped his Majesty’s subjects on the high

road, acquaintance or strangers, no matter! and proposed some

knotty point of controversy. Sometimes I fell in with a clan of

Irish, and an altercation never comes amiss to them! That was

your time, if you are fond of a battle. Such gestures! such

grimaces! such contortions! Our eyes sparkling, and our mouths

foaming! Those who did not take us for what we affected to be,

philosophers, must have set us down for madmen.

 

But let that be as it will, I gained the reputation of no small

learning in the town. My uncle was delighted, because he

prudently considered that I should so much the sooner cease to be

chargeable to him. Come here, Gil Blas, quoth he one day, you are

got to be a fine fellow. You are past seventeen, and. a clever

lad; you must bestir yourself, and get forward in the world. I

think of sending you to the university of Salamanca: with your

wit you will easily get a good post. I will give you a few ducats

for your journey, and my mule, which will fetch ten or twelve

pistoles at Salamanca, and with such a sum at setting out, you

will be enabled to hold up your head till you get a situation.

 

He could not have proposed to me anything more agreeable: for I

was dying to see a little of life. At the same time, I was not

such a fool as to betray my satisfaction; and when it came to the

hour of parting, by the sensibility I discovered at taking leave

of my dear uncle, to whom I was so much obliged, and by calling

in the stage effect of grief, I so softened the good soul, that

he put his hand deeper into his pocket than he would have done,

could he have pried into all that was passing in the interior of

my hypocritical little heart. Before my departure I took a last

leave of my papa and mamma, who loaded me with an ample

inheritance of good advice. They enjoined me to pray to God for

my uncle, to go honestly through the world, not to engage in any

ill, and above all, not to lay my hands on other people’s

property. After they had lectured me for a good while, they made

me a present of their blessing which was all my patrimony and all

my expectation. As soon as I had received it, I mounted my mule,

and saw the outside of the town.

 

CH. II — Gil Blas’ alarm on his road to Pegnaflor; his

adventures on his arrival in that town; and the character of the

men with whom he supped.

 

HERE I am, then, on the other side of Oviedo, in the road to

Pegnaflor, with the world before me, as yet my own master, as

well master of a bad mule and forty good ducats, without

reckoning on a little supplementary cash purloined from my much-honoured uncle. The first thing I did was to let my mule go as

the beast liked, that is to say, very lazily. I dropped the rein,

and taking out my ducats, began to count them backwards and

forwards in my hat. I was out of my wits for joy, never having

seen such a sum of money before, and could not help looking at it

and sifting it through my fingers. I had counted it over about

the twentieth time, when all at once my mule, with head raised,

and ears pricked up, stood stock still in the middle of the high

road. I thought, to be sure, something was the matter; looked

about for a cause, and perceiving a hat upon the ground, with a

rosary of large beads, at the same time heard a lugubrious voice

pronounce these words: Pray, honoured master, have pity on a poor

maimed soldier! Please to throw a few small pieces into this hat;

you shall be rewarded for it in the other world. I looked

immediately on the side whence the voice proceeded, and saw, just

by a thicket, twenty or thirty paces from me, a sort of a

soldier, who had mounted the barrel of a confounded long carbine

on two cross sticks, and seemed to be taking aim at me. At a

sight which made me tremble for the patrimony of the Church

committed to my care, I stopped short, made sure of my ducats,

and taking out a little small change, as I rode by the hat,

placed to receive the charity of those quiet subjects who had not

the courage to refuse it, dropped in my contribution in detail,

to convince the soldier how nobly I dealt by him. He was

satisfied with my liberality, and gave me a blessing for every

kick I gave my mule in my impatience to get out of his way; but

the infernal beast, without partaking in the slightest degree of

my impatience, went at the old steady pace. A long custom of

jogging on fair and softly under my uncle’s weight had

obliterated every idea of that motion called a gallop.

 

The prospect of my journey was not much improved by this

adventure as a specimen. I considered within myself that I had

yet some distance to Salamanca, and might, not improbably, meet

with something worse. My uncle seemed to have been very imprudent

not to have consigned me to the care of a muleteer. That, to be

sure, was what he ought to have done; but his notion was, that by

giving me his mule, my journey would be cheaper; and that entered

more into his calculation than the dangers in which I might be

involved on the road. To retrieve his error, therefore, I

resolved, if I had the good luck to arrive safe at Pegnaflor, to

offer my mule for sale, and take the opportunity of a muleteer

going to Astorga, whence I might get to Salamanca by a similar

conveyance. Though I had never been out of Oviedo I was

acquainted with the names of the towns through which I was to

pass; a species of information I took care to procure before my

setting out.

 

I got safe and sound to Pegnaflor, and stopped at the door of a

very decent looking inn. My foot was scarcely out of the stirrup

before the landlord was at my side, overwhelming me with public-house civility. He untied my cloakbag with his own hands, swung

it across his shoulders, and ushered my Honour into a room, while

one of his men led my mule to the stable. This landlord, the most

busy prattler of the Asturias, ready to bother you impertinently

about his own concerns, and, at the same time, with a sufficient

portion of curiosity to worm himself into the knowledge of yours,

was not long in telling me that his name was Andrew Corcuelo;

that he had seen some service as a sergeant in the army, which he

had quitted fifteen months ago, and married a girl of Castropol,

who, though a little tawny or so, knew how to make both ends meet

as well as the best of them. He told me a thousand things besides

which he might just as well have kept private. Thinking himself

entitled, after this voluntary confidence, to an equal share of

mine, he asked me in a breath, and without further preface,

whence I came, whither I was going, and who I was. To all this I

felt myself bound to answer, article by article, because, though

rather abrupt in asking them, he accompanied each question with

so apologetic a bow, beseeching me with so submissive a grimace

not to be offended at his curiosity, that I was drawn in to

gratify it whether I would or no. Thus by degrees did we get into

a long conversation, in the course of which I took occasion to

hint that I had some reasons for wishing to get rid of my mule,

and travel under convoy of a muleteer. He seemed on the whole to

approve of my plan, though he could not prevail with himself to

tell me so briefly; for he introduced his remarks by descanting

on all the possible and probable mischances to which travellers

are liable on the road, not omitting an awkward story now and

then. I thought the fellow would never have done. But the

conclusion of the argument was, that if I wanted to sell my mule,

he knew an honest jockey who would take it off my hands. I begged

he would do me the favour to fetch him, which was no sooner said

than done.

 

On his return he introduced the purchaser, with a high encomium

on his integrity. We all three went into the yard, and the mule

was brought out to show paces before the jockey, who set himself

to examine the beast from head to foot. His report was bad

enough. To be sure, it would not have been easy to make a good

one; but if it had been the pope’s mule, and this fellow was to

cheapen the bargain, it would have been just the same: nay, to

speak with all due reverence, if he had been asked to give an

opinion of the pope’s great toe, from that disparaging habit of

his, he would have pronounced it no better than the toe of any

ordinary man. He laid it down, therefore, as a principle, that

the mule had all the defects a mule could have: appealing to the

landlord for a confirmation of his judgment, who, doubtless, had

reasons of his own for not controverting his friend’s assertion.

Well! says the jockey, with an air of in difference, What price

have you the conscience to ask for this devil of an animal? After

such a panegyric, and master Corcuelo’s certificate, whom I was

fool enough to take for a fair-dealing man and a good judge of

horse-flesh, they might have had the mule for nothing. I

therefore told the dealer that I threw myself on his mercy: he

must fix his own sum, and I should expect no more. On this he

began to affect the gentleman, and answered that I had found out

his weak side