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

see before you the young man as by former advice. He is a pupil of honor and integrity. I can answer for him as if he was one of my own family.” The gentleman looked at me with attention, said that my face was in my favor, and hired me at once. “He has nothing to do but to follow me,” added he; “I will put him into the routine of his employment.”

At these words, he wished the tradesman good morning, and took me into the High-street, directly over against St. Philip’s church. We went into a very handsome house, of which he occupied one wing; then going up five or six steps, he took me into a room secured by strong double doors, with an iron grate between. From this room we went into another, with a bed and other furniture, rather neat than gaudy.

If my new master had examined me closely, I had all my wits about me as well as he. He was a man on the wrong side of fifty, with a saturnine and serious air. His temper seemed to be even, and I thought no harm of him. He asked me several questions about my family; and, liking my answers, “Gil Blas,” said he, “I take you to be a very sensible lad, and am well pleased to have you in my service. On your part you shall have no reason to complain. I will give you six reals a day board wages, besides vails. Then I require no great attendance, for I keep no table, but always dine out. You will only have to brush my clothes, and be your own master for the rest of the day. Only take care to be at home early in the evening, and to be in waiting at the door⁠—that is your chief duty.”

After this lecture, he took six reals out of his purse, and gave them to me as earnest. We then went out, he locked the doors after him, and, taking care of the keys, “My friend,” said he, “you need not go with me, follow the devices of your own heart; but on my return this evening, let me find you on that staircase.” With this injunction, he left me to dispose of myself as seemed best in my own eyes.

“In good sooth, Gil Blas,” said I in a soliloquy, “you have got a jewel of a master. What! fall in with an employer to give you six reals a day for wiping off the dust from his clothes, and putting his room to rights in the morning, with the liberty of walking about and taking your pleasure like a schoolboy in the holidays! By my troth! it is a place of ten thousand. No wonder I was in a hurry to get to Madrid, it was doubtless some mysterious boding of good fortune prepared for me.”

I spent the day in the streets, diverting myself with gaping at novelties⁠—a busy occupation. In the evening, after supping at an ordinary not far from our house, I squatted myself down in the corner pointed out by my master. He came three quarters of an hour after me, and seemed pleased with my punctuality. “Very well,” said he, “this is right, I like attentive servants.” At these words, he opened the doors of his apartment, and closed them upon us again as soon as we got in. As we had no candle, he took his tinderbox, and struck a light. I then helped him to undress. When he was in bed, I lighted, by his order, a lamp in his chimney, and carried the wax-light into the antechamber, where I lay in a press-bed without curtains. He got up the next day between nine and ten o’clock; I brushed his clothes. He paid me my six reals, and sent me packing till the evening. My mysterious master went out himself, too, not without great caution in fastening the doors, and we parted for the remainder of the day.

Such was the course of life, very agreeable to me. The best of the joke was, that I did not know my master’s name. Meléndez did not know it himself. The gentleman came to his shop now and then, and bought a piece of cloth. My neighbors were as much at a loss as myself; they all assured me that my master was a perfect stranger, though he had lived two years in the ward. He visited no soul in the neighborhood, and some of them, a little given to scandal, concluded him to be no better than he should be. Suspicions got to be more rife; he was suspected of being a spy of Portugal, and it was thought but fair play to give a hint for my own good. This intimation troubled me. Thought I to myself, should this turn out to be a fact, I stand a chance for seeing the inside of a prison at Madrid. My innocence will be no security; my past ill-usage makes me look on justice with antipathy. Twice have I experienced that if the innocent are not condemned in a lump with the guilty, at least the rights of hospitality are too little regarded in their persons to make it pleasant to pass a summer in the purlieus of the law.

I consulted Meléndez in so delicate a conjuncture. He was at a loss how to advise me. Though he could not bring himself to believe that my master was a spy, he had no reason to be confident on the other side of the question. I determined to watch my employer, and to leave him if he turned out to be an enemy of the state; but then prudence and personal comfort required me to be certain of my fact. I began, therefore, to pry into his actions; and, to sound him, “Sir,” said I one evening while he was undressing, “I do not know how one ought to live so as