Gil Blas - Alain-René Lesage (online e book reader .txt) 📗

ever since his discharge from the hospital. He was very decently dressed. I called him up, gave him a seat in my carriage, and we drove together to St. Jerome’s meadow.

“Master Núñez,” said I, “it is lucky for me to have met you accidentally; for otherwise I should not have had the pleasure⁠ ⁠…”

“No severe speeches, Santillane,” interrupted he with considerable eagerness: “I must own frankly that I did not mean to keep up your acquaintance, and I will tell you the reason. You promised me a good situation provided I abjured poetry; but I have found a very excellent one on condition of keeping my talents in constant play. I accepted the latter alternative, as squaring best with my own humor. A friend of mine got me an employment under Don Bertrand Gómez del Ribero, treasurer of the king’s galleys. This Don Bertrand, wanting to have a wit in his pay, and finding my turn for poetical composition very much in unison with his own sense of what is excellent, has chosen me in preference to five or six authors who offered themselves as candidates for the place of his private secretary.”

“I am delighted at the news, my dear Fabricio,” said I, “for this Don Bertrand must be very rich.”

“Rich indeed!” answered he; “they say that he does not know himself how much he is worth. However that may be, my business under him is as follows: He prides himself on his turn for gallantry, at the same time wishing to pass for a man of genius; he therefore keeps up an epistolary intercourse of wit with several ladies who have an infinite deal, and borrows my brain to indite such letters as may amplify the opinion of his sprightliness and elegance. I write to one for him in verse, to another in prose, and sometimes carry the letters myself, to prove the agility of my heels as well as the ingenuity of my head.”

“But you do not tell me,” said I, “what I most want to know. Are you well paid for your epigrammatic cards of compliment?”

“Yes, most plentifully,” answered he. “Rich men are not always openhanded; and I know some who are downright curmudgeons; but Don Bertrand has behaved in the most handsome manner. Besides a salary of two hundred pistoles, I receive some little occasional perquisites from him, sufficient to set me above the world, and enable me to live on an equal footing with some choice spirits of the literary circles, who are willing, like myself, to set care at defiance.”

“But then,” resumed I, “has your treasurer critical skill enough to distinguish the beauties of a performance from its blemishes?”

“The least likely man in the world,” answered Núñez; “a flippant-tongued smatterer, with a miserable assortment of materials for judging. Yet he gives himself out for chief justice and lord president of Apollo’s tribunal. His decisions are adventurous, if not always lucky; while his opinions are maintained in so high a tone and with so bullying a challenge of infallibility, that nine times out of ten the issue of an argument is silence, though not conviction, on the part of the opponent, as a measure of precaution against the gathering storm of foul language and contemptuous sneers.

“You may readily suppose,” continued he, “that I take especial care never to contradict him, though it almost exceeds human patience to forbear; for, to say nothing of the unpalatable phrases that might be hailed down on my defenceless head, I should stand a very good chance of being shoved by the shoulders out of doors. I therefore am discreet enough to approve what he praises, and to condemn without mitigation or appeal whatever he is pleased to find fault with. By this easy compliance⁠—for poets are compelled to acquire a knack of knocking under to those by whom they live, not even excepting their booksellers⁠—I have gained the esteem and friendship of my patron. He has employed me to write a tragedy on a plot of his own. I have executed it under his inspection; and if the piece succeeds, a percentage on the laud and honor must accrue to him.”

I asked our poet what was the title of his tragedy. He informed me that it was The Count of Saldaña, and that it would come out in two or three days. I told him that I wished it all possible success, and thought so favorably of his genius as to entertain considerable hopes. “So do I,” said he; “but hope never tells a more flattering tale than in the ear of a dramatic author. You might as well attempt to fix the wind by nailing the weathercock as speculate on the reception of a new piece with an audience.”

At length the day of performance arrived. I could not go to the play, being prevented by official business. The only thing to be done was to send Scipio, that he might bring me back word how it went off, for I was sincerely interested in the event. After waiting impatiently for his return, in he came with a long face, which boded no good. “Well,” said I, “how was The Count of Saldaña welcomed by the critics?”

“Very roughly,” answered he; “never was there a play more brutally handled; I left the house in high anger at the injustice and insolence of the pit.”

“It serves him right,” rejoined I. “Núñez is no better than a madman, to be always running his head against the stone walls of a theatre. If he was in his senses, could he have preferred the hisses and catcalls of an unfeeling mob to the ease and dignity he might have commanded under my patronage?” Thus did I inveigh with friendly vehemence against the poet of the Asturias, and disturb the even tenor of my mind for an event which the sufferer hailed with joy, and inserted among the well-omened particulars of his journal.

He came to see me within two days, and appeared in high spirits.