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

As I had not been able to complete my view of the city on the preceding day, I got up betimes in the morning with the intention of taking another walk. In the street I remarked a Carthusian friar, who doubtless was thus early in motion to promote the interests of his order. He walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, and a gait so holy and contemplative as to inspire every passenger with religious awe. His path was in the same direction as mine. I looked at him with more than ordinary curiosity, and could not help fancying it was Don Raphael, that man of shifts and expedients, who has already secured so honorable a niche in the temple of fame. (See Books I to VI of my Memoirs.)

I was so utterly astonished, so thrown off my balance by this meeting, that, instead of accosting the monk, I remained motionless for some seconds, which gave him time to get the start of me. “Just heaven!” said I, “were there ever two faces more exactly alike? I do not know what to make of it! It seems incredible that Raphael should turn up in such a guise! And yet how is it possible to be anyone else?”

I felt too great a curiosity to get at the truth not to pursue the inquiry. Having ascertained the way to the monastery of the Carthusians, I repaired thither immediately, in the hope of coming across the object of my search on his return, and with the full intent of stopping and parleying with him. But it was quite unnecessary to wait for his arrival, to enlighten my mind on the subject; on reaching the convent gate, another physiognomy, such as few persons had read without paying for their lesson, resolved all my doubts into certainty; for the friar who served in the capacity of porter was unquestionably my old and godly-visaged servant, Ambrose de Lamela.

Our surprise was equal on both sides at meeting again in such a place. “Is not this a play upon the senses?” said I, paying my compliments to him. “Is it actually one of my friends who presents himself to my astonished sight?”

He did not know me again at first, or probably might pretend not to do so; but, reflecting within himself that it was in vain to deny his own identity, he assumed the start of a man who all at once hits upon a circumstance which had hitherto escaped his recollection. “Ah, Señor Gil Blas,” exclaimed he, “excuse my not recognizing your person immediately. Since I have lived in this holy place, every faculty of my soul has been absorbed in the performance of the duties prescribed by our rules, so that by degrees I lose the remembrance of all worldly objects and events.”

“After a separation of ten years,” said I, “it gives me much pleasure to find you again in so venerable a garb.”

“For my part,” answered he, “it fills me with shame and confusion to appear in it before a man who has been an eyewitness of my guilty courses. These ghostly weeds are at once the charm of my present life, and the condemnation of my former. Alas!” added he, heaving a righteous sigh, “to be worthy of wearing it, my earlier years should have been passed in primitive innocence.”

“By this discourse, so rational and edifying,” replied I, “it is plain, my dear brother, that the finger of the Lord has been upon you, that you are marked out for a vessel of sanctification. I tell you once again, I am delighted at it, and would give the world to know in what miraculous manner you and Raphael were led into the path of the righteous; for I am persuaded that it was his own self whom I met in the town, habited as a Carthusian. I was extremely sorry, afterwards, not to have stopped and spoken to him in the street, and I am waiting here to apologize for my neglect on his return.”

“You were not mistaken,” said Lamela; “it was Don Raphael himself whom you saw; and as for the particulars of our conversion, they are as follow: After parting with you near Segorba, we struck into the Valencia road, with the design of bettering our trade by some new speculation. Chance or destiny one day led our steps into the church of the Carthusians, while service was performing in the choir. The demeanor of the brethren attracted our notice, and we experienced in our own persons the involuntary homage which vice pays to virtue. We admired the fervor with which they poured forth their devotions, their looks of pious mortification, their deadness to the pleasures of the world and the flesh, and in the settled composure of their countenances, the outward sign of an approving conscience within.

“While making these observations, we fell into a train of thought which became like manna to the hungry and thirsty soul: we compared our habits of life with the employments of these holy men, and the wide difference between our spiritual conditions filled us with confusion and affright. ‘Lamela,’ said Don Raphael, as we went out of church, ‘how do you stand affected by what we have just seen? For my part, there is no disguising the truth; my mind is ill at ease. Emotions new and indescribable are rushing upon my mind; and, for the first time in my life, I reproach myself with the wickedness of my past actions.’

“ ‘I am just in the same temper of soul,’ answered I; ‘my iniquities are all drawn up in array against me; they beset me, they stare me in the face; my heart, hitherto proof against all the arrows of remorse, is at this moment shot through and through, torn and disfigured, tormented and destroyed.’

“ ‘Ah! my dear Ambrose,’ resumed my partner, ‘we are two stray sheep, whom our heavenly Father, in mercy, would lead back