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

unanimously took him at his word, and arranged ourselves for listening like an attentive audience. The speculation was a safe one on our parts; for the tale was sure to answer, either as a stimulant or a soporific.

“I certainly ought to have been descended,” said Scipio, “from some family of the highest rank and earliest antiquity; or, in default of such parentage, from the most distinguished orders of personal merit, such as that of St. James of Alcántara, if a man may be permitted to decide on the fittest circumstances for his own birth: but as it is not among the privileges of human nature to elect one’s own father, you are to know that mine, by name Torribio Scipio, was a subaltern myrmidon of the Holy Brotherhood. As he was going back and fore on the king’s highway, and looking after business in his own line, he met, once on a time, between Cuenja and Toledo, with a young Bohemian babe of chance, who appeared very pretty in his eyes. She was alone, on foot, and carried her whole patrimony at her back in a kind of knapsack. ‘Whither are you going, my little darling?’ said he in a philandering tone of voice, unlike the natural hoarseness of his accents. ‘Good worthy gentleman,’ answered she, ‘I am going to Toledo, where I hope to gain an honest livelihood by hook or by crook.’

“ ‘Your intentions are highly commendable,’ retorted he; ‘and I doubt not but you have many a hook and many a crook among the implements of your trade.’

“ ‘Yes, with a blessing on my endeavors,’ rejoined she: ‘I have several little ways of doing for myself: I know how to make washes and creams for the ladies’ faces, perfumes for their noses and their chambers; then I can tell fortunes, can search for things lost with a sieve and shears, and erect figures for the taking in of shadows with a glass.’

“Torribio, concluding that so well provided a girl would be a very advantageous match for a man like himself, who could scarcely scrape wherewithal to support life by his own profession, though he was as good a thief-taker as the best of them, made her an offer of marriage, and she was nothing loath, nor prudishly coy. They flew on the wings of inclination and convenience to Toledo, where they were joined together; and you behold in me the happy pledge of holy and lawful matrimony. They fixed themselves in a shop on the outskirts of the town; where my mother commenced her career by selling the said washes, creams, tapes, laces, silk, thread, toys, and peddler’s ware; but trade not being brisk enough to live comfortably by it, she turned fortune-teller. This drew her customers, got her countenance, credit, crowns, and pistoles: a thousand dupes of either sex soon trumpeted up the reputation of Cosclina; for so my gypsy mamma had the honor to be named. Some one or other came every day to bargain for the exercise of her skill in the black art; at one time a nephew at his wit’s and purse’s end, wanting to know how soon his uncle was to set off post for the other world, and leave behind him wherewithal to piece his worn-out fortunes; at another, some yielding, lovesick girl, to inquire whether the swain who kept her company, and had promised to marry her, would keep his word or be false-hearted.

“You will take notice, if you please, that my mother always sold good luck for good money: if the accomplishment trod on the heels of the prediction, well and good; if it was fulfilled according to the rule of contraries, she was always cool, though the parties were ever so violently in a passion, and told them plainly that it was her familiar’s fault, not hers; for though she paid him the highest wages, and bound him by potent spells to stir up the cauldron of futurity from the bottom, like earthly cooks, he would sometimes be careless or out of humor, and apportion the ingredients wrongly.

“When my mother thought the conjuncture momentous enough to raise the devil without cheapening him in the eyes of the vulgar, Torribio Scipio enacted his infernal majesty, and played the part just as if he had been born to it, humoring the hideous features of the character by a very small aggravation of his own natural face, and practising the pandemonian note of elocution in the lower octave of his voice. A person in the slightest degree superstitious would be scared out of his senses at my father’s figure. But one day, as his satanic prototype would have it, there came a savage rascal of a captain, who asked to see the devil, for no earthly purpose but to run him clean through the body. The inquisition, having received notice of the devil’s death, sent to take charge of his widow, and administer to his effects: as for poor little me, just seven years old at the time, I was sent to the foundling hospital. There were some charitable ecclesiastics on that establishment, who, being liberally paid for the education of the poor orphans, were so zealous in their office as to teach them reading and writing. They fancied there was something particularly promising about me, which made them pick me out from all the rest, and send me on their errands. I was letter-carrier, messenger, and chapel-clerk. As a token of their gratitude, they undertook to teach me Latin; but their mode of tuition was so harsh, and their discipline so severe, though I was a sort of pet with them, that, not being able to stand it longer, I ran away one morning while out on an errand, and, so far from returning to the hospital, got out of Toledo through the suburbs on the Seville side.

“Though I had not then completed my ninth year, I already felt the pleasure of being free, and master of my own actions. I was