Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage (best romance books of all time TXT) 📕

yet the expense was reduced very considerably by a well-regulated economy. That was just what my employer wanted; good housewifery, but a magnificent establishment. There was a love of saving at the bottom, but a taste for grandeur was the ostensible passion.

Abuses seldom exist alone. The wine flowed too freely. If, for instance, there were a dozen gentlemen at his lordship’s table, the consumption was seldom less than fifty, sometimes sixty bottles. This was strange, and looked as if there was more in it than met the lips of the guests. Hereupon I consulted my oracle of the scullery, whence I derived most of my wisdom; for he brought me a faithful account of all that was said and done in the kitchen, where they had not the least suspicion of him. It seemed that the havoc of which I complained proceeded from a new confederacy between the clerk of the kitchen, the cook, and the under butler. The latter carried off the bottles half full, and shared their contents with his allies. I spoke to him on the subject, threatening to turn him and all the footmen under him out of doors at a minute’s warning, if ever they did the like again. The hint was understood, and the evil remedied. I took especial care lest the slightest of my services should be lost upon my master, who overwhelmed me with commendations, and took a greater liking to me every day. On my part, as a reward to the scullion, he was promoted to the situation next under the cook.

The Neapolitan was furious at encountering me in every direction. The most aggravating circumstance of the whole was the overhauling of his accounts; for, to pare his nails the closer, I had gone into the market, and informed myself of the prices. I followed him through all his doublings, and always took off the market penny which he wanted to add. He must have cursed me a hundred times a day; but the curses of the wicked fall in blessings on the good. I wonder how he could stay in his place under such discipline; but probably something still stuck by the fingers.

Fabricio, whom I saw occasionally, rather blamed my conduct than otherwise.

“Heaven grant,” said he, “one day, that all this virtue may meet with its reward! But between ourselves, you might as well be a little more practicable with the clerk of the kitchen.”

“What!” answered I, “shall this freebooter put a bold face upon the matter, and charge a fish at ten pistoles in his bill which cost only four? and would you have me pass the articles in my accounts?”

“Why not?” replied he, coolly. “He has only to let you go snacks in the commission, and the books will be balanced in your favor by the customary rule of stewardship arithmetic. Upon my word, my friend, you are enough to overturn all regular systems of housekeeping; and you are likely to end your days in a livery, if you let the eel slip through your fingers without skinning it. You are to learn that fortune is a very woman, ready and eager to surrender, but expecting the formality of a summons.”

I only laughed at this doctrine, and Núñez laughed at it too, when he found that bad advice was thrown away upon an incorrigibly honest subject. He then wished to make me believe it was all a mere joke. At all events, nothing could shake my resolution to act for my employer as for myself. Indeed, my actions corresponded with my words on that subject; for I may venture to say that in four months my master saved at least three thousand ducats by my thrift.

XVI

An accident happens to the Count de Galiano’s monkey⁠—His lordship’s affliction on that occasion⁠—The illness of Gil Blas, and its consequences.

At the expiration of the before-mentioned time, the repose of the family was marvellously troubled by an accident, which will appear but a trifle to the reader, and yet it was a very serious matter to the household, especially to me. Cupid, the monkey of whom I was speaking, that animal so much the idol of our lord and master, attempting to leap from one window to another, performed so ill as to fall into the court and put his leg out of joint. No sooner were the fatal tidings carried to the count, than he sung a dirge which pealed through all the neighborhood. In the extremity of his sufferings, every inmate without exception was taken to task, and we were all within an inch of being packed off about our business. But the storm only rumbled, without falling; he gave us and our negligence to the devil, without being by any means select in the terms of the bequest. The most notorious of the faculty in the line of fractures and dislocations were sent for. They examined the poor dear leg, set, and bound it up. But though they all gave it as their opinion that there was no danger, my master could not be satisfied without retaining the most eminent about the person of the animal, till he could be pronounced to be in a state of convalescence.

It would be a manifest injustice to the family affections of his Sicilian lordship, not to commemorate all the agonizing sensations of his soul during this period of painful suspense. Would it be thought possible that this tender nurse did not stir from his darling Cupid’s bedside all the livelong day? The bandages were never altered or adjusted but in his presence, and he got up two or three times in the night to enquire after his patient. The most provoking part of the business was, that all the servants, and myself in particular, were required to be eternally on the alert, to anticipate the slightest wishes of this ridiculous baboon. In short, there was no peace in the house, till the cursed beast, having recovered from the