The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane by Alain René le Sage (good books to read in english .TXT) 📕

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,