GIL BLAS
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
If, as some say, the object of fiction is simply to amuse, no work of fiction has better attained that object than “Gil Blas.” It is the greatest and the most celebrated of that class of novels called the novela picaresca, or rogue story, and consists of a succession of the liveliest and merriest incidents, slenderly connected as parts of the autobiography of a Spanish lackey, and narrated in a style that is a model of luminous simplicity. The hero encounters every variety of good and evil fortune, each following the other like the figures of a kaleidoscope. From the moment when, as a simple youth, he is sent forth into the world with a mule and forty ducats, he plunges into the midst of ludicrous adventures. At the first town he entertains at supper a parasite who calls him “the ornament of Oviedo,” “the torch of philosophy,” “the eighth wonder of the world,” and who, after gorging himself at the expense of the young student, laughs in his face at his credulity. He is next decoyed into a cave of robbers, where he is locked in and made to serve as the Ganymede of the band, but before long he escapes and rescues a fair lady, Doña Mencia, who gratefully gives him a thousand ducats and a valuable ring. But he tells of his good fortune, and is fleeced of his money and his ring in a confidence game skillfully played by one Camilla and by Don Rafael, her pretended brother, acting in concert with his own valet, Ambrose. In his misfortune he meets Fabricio, an old schoolmate, who advises him to become a lackey rather than a tutor, since the former calling opens a better career than teaching to a man of shrewd wit. Gil Blas is convinced, and seeks a situation.
His first place is with the fat licentiate, Sedillo, where he serves faithfully and leads a dog’s life in hopes of a legacy, as soon as his master shall be carried off with the gout. He gets as the legacy his master’s library, consisting of three books, “The Perfect Cook,” a work on indigestion, and a breviary. Then he takes a situation with Dr. Sangrado, the physician who has hastened Sedillo’s departure from the world, from whom he learns in a word the whole art of healing, to wit, bleeding profusely and administering vast quantities of hot water, a system which Gil Blas puts into practice as Sangrado’s deputy, kills most of his patients, and has to flee from Valladolid in the night. After many adventures he arrives at Madrid, becomes the servant of Don Mathias de Silva, a dissolute young nobleman, and learns much of the ways of the world. Dressed in his master’s clothes, he makes love to a great lady, as he supposes, but finds that she is Laura, the maid of the actress Arsenia, whom his master visits. Don Mathias is killed in a duel, whereupon our hero takes service with the actress, and has fine times with his dear Laura, but at last leaves the place because he is unwilling “to live any longer with the seven mortal sins.” Next he takes a situation with Don Vincent de Guzman, fancies that his master’s daughter Aurora is in love with him, and makes a great fool of himself at a midnight interview, where she seeks his aid in behalf of her passion for Don Luis Pacheco. A very pretty story follows of her efforts in the guise of a man to inspire Pacheco’s love, efforts which are not unlike those of Rosalind with Orlando, and which in like manner are crowned with success. Gil Blas then goes to live with Pacheco’s uncle, an asthmatic old man, who looks “like the resurrection of Lazarus,” but who loves the young and beautiful Euphrasia. Gil Blas finds another gallant hidden in her room, and tells his master, but he is dismissed for his pains.
Our hero now renders a service to a young nobleman, Don Alphonso de Leyva, who is a fugitive from justice, and goes with him to a cave, where Don Raphael and Ambrose are found disguised as hermits, and the former gives a graphic account of his past life and rogueries. At first Gil Blas and Don Alphonso join them in their rascally enterprises. They all array themselves as inquisitors, and proceed to appropriate the property of Samuel Simon, a converted Jew, whom they charge with relapsing into heresy. The questions propounded in behalf of the Holy Office are highly grotesque. But neither Gil Blas nor Don Alphonso are willing to continue such a life, so they part from their companions, and Don Alphonso, who is soon after happily married to Seraphina (quite a long love story hangs thereby), makes Gil Blas the intendant of his castle. But Gil Blas quarrels with Seraphina’s maid, whereupon he leaves the service of his friend and betakes himself to Granada, where he obtains a place as secretary of the archbishop. The description of the learned prelate, short, fat, and very vain of his oratorical gifts, is extremely lifelike, and the following scene, where he requires Gil Blas to give him a warning of his failing powers, is deservedly celebrated:
One evening he repeated before me with enthusiasm a homily which he intended to pronounce next day in the cathedral. He was not contented with asking me what I thought of it in a general way; he obliged me to single out the particular places which I most admired. I had the good luck to mention his favorite passages, those which he looked upon as the best. By this means I passed in his judgment for a man who had a delicate knowledge of the true beauties of a work. “That,” he cried, “is what you call having taste and sentiment! Go to, my friend, I assure you, you have not got Boeotian ears.” In a word, he was so well satisfied with me that he said to me, with some vivacity, “Gil Blas, give thyself no uneasiness about thy fortune. I undertake to make it agreeable. I love thee, and as a proof of my affection, make thee my confidant.... Listen with attention to what I am going to say to thee. My chief pleasure consists in preaching. The Lord gives a blessing to my homilies. They touch the hearts of sinners and make them seriously reflect and have recourse to penitence. I have the satisfaction of seeing a miser, terrified by the images which I represent to his avarice, open his treasures and squander them with a prodigal hand. I have also turned a voluptuary from his pleasures, filled hermitages with the ambitious, and strengthened in her duty a wife who had been shaken by the allurements of a lover. These conversions, which are frequent, ought of themselves to arouse me to work. Nevertheless, I will confess my weakness, I propose to myself another reward, a reward which the delicacy of my virtue reproaches me with in vain; I mean the esteem of the world for fine polished writing. The honor of being regarded a perfect orator has many charms for me. My works are found equally strong and delicate, but I would like to avoid the fault of good authors who write too long, and I would retire with all my reputation. Therefore, my dear Gil Blas,” continued the prelate, “I exact one thing of thy zeal. When thou shalt perceive that my pen smacks of old age, when thou shalt see my genius flagging, don’t fail to advise me of it. I do not trust my own judgment upon that point. My self-love may deceive me. That observation requires a disinterested mind, and I make choice of thine, which I know is good. I will rely upon thy judgment.... Do not fear to be frank and sincere, for I shall receive thy advice as a mark of thy affection for me. Besides, thy own interest is concerned; if, unfortunately for thee, it should come to my ears that they say in the city my discourses have no longer their wonted force and it is high time for me to rest, I declare to thee plainly that thou shalt lose my friendship as well as the fortune I have promised. Such will be the fruit of thy foolish discretion.”
After the bishop has had an attack of apoplexy, and the time comes for Gil Blas to perform his duty, this is what happens:
The only thing that embarrassed me now was how to break the ice. Luckily the orator himself extricated me from that difficulty, by asking what people said of him, and if they were satisfied with his last discourse. I answered that his homilies were always admired, but in my opinion the last had not succeeded so well as the rest, in affecting the audience. “How, friend!” replied he, with astonishment, “has it met with any Aristarchus?” “No, sir,” said I, “by no means; such works as yours are not to be criticised; everybody is charmed with them. Nevertheless, since you have laid your injunctions upon me to be free and sincere, I will take the liberty to tell you that your last discourse, in my judgment, has not altogether the energy of your other performances. Are you not of the same opinion?”
My master grew pale at these words; and said, with a forced smile, “So then, Mr. Gil Blas, this piece is not to your taste?” “I don’t say so, sir,” cried I, quite disconcerted; “I think it excellent, although a little inferior to your other productions.” “I understand you,” he replied, “you think I am failing, don’t you? Come, be plain; you believe it is time for me to think of retiring.” “I should not have been so bold,” said I, “as to speak so freely, if your grace had not commanded me; I do no more, therefore, than obey you; and I most humbly beg that you will not be offended at my freedom.” “God forbid,” cried he with precipitation, “God forbid that I should find fault with it. In so doing, I should be very unjust. I don’t at all take it ill that you speak your sentiment; it is your sentiment only that I find bad. I have been most egregiously deceived in your narrow understanding.”
Though I was disconcerted, I endeavored to find some mitigation, in order to set things to rights again; but how is it possible to appease an incensed author, one especially who has been accustomed to hear himself praised? “Say no more, my child,” said he, “you are yet too raw to distinguish the true from the false. Know that I never composed a better homily than that which you disapprove; for my genius, thank Heaven, hath as yet lost nothing of its vigor. Henceforth I will make a better choice of a confidant, and keep one of greater ability than you. Go,” he added (pushing me by the shoulders out of the room), “go tell my treasurer to give you a hundred ducats, and may Heaven conduct you with that sum. Adieu, Mr. Gil Blas, I wish you all manner of prosperity, with a little more taste.”
And so the comedy goes on. One new face after another appears on the scene, among them Captain Hannibal Chinchilla, with monstrous moustache, who has left an eye in Naples, an arm in Lombardy, and a leg in the Low Country; then Count Galiano, who is fonder of his monkey than of his servants. Our hero becomes one of the secretaries of the prime minister, the Duke of Lerma, where he acquires great honor, but for a long time, no pay. Finally he sells his influence, gets into court intrigues, rises step by step, until he is about to marry the daughter of a rich jeweller, when he is arrested and thrown into the tower of Segovia. Here he is found by his faithful valet Scipio, who gets him released. He now determines to renounce the court forever, and his old friend Don Alphonso gives him a small estate at Lirias. But when the new king comes in, Gil Blas is tempted back again, rises rapidly under Count Olivares, and when this minister falls, follows him into retirement. Upon the death of the count, Gil Blas returns to Lirias, where his marriage and his happy life with his wife, Dorothea, close the story.
Many of the personages of the tale reappear at the most unlooked for places and in the most unexpected characters. For instance, the two rascals, Don Raphael and Ambrose, turn up as monks in a convent, where they have led a life of great piety and penitence for over a year. But Don Raphael is the treasurer and Ambrose is the porter of the monastery, and soon these worthy brothers disappear with all the funds. They come to their deserts, however, for the last that is seen of them they are walking with other culprits to an auto da fe, their heads decorated with the carochas or pasteboard caps upon which are painted the flames and devils of eternal punishment.
Another interesting character who comes in at different parts of the story is the schoolmate of Gil Blas, Fabricio, the son of the barber Nunez. At first a valet, he next turns up as a poet, having composed a worthless comedy which was a great success, from which he judged the public was a good milch cow. Some amusing descriptions follow of Fabricio’s opinion as to what constitutes a fine style. He reads a sonnet which Gil Blas cannot understand, but the son of the barber Nunez insists that this shows its excellence—that obscurity is the charm of all works that aim to be sublime, and that it is quite enough if the poet thinks they have a meaning. There are amusing portraits of Fabricio’s friends, who imagine themselves great authors and who dispute and fight at their host’s table over the comparative merits of their wretched productions. Next Fabricio is found in the hospital; he has abandoned the Muses and written an ode to bid them an eternal adieu. But as soon as he is well he is back at his old occupation, and gets a place with a liberal patron, Gómez de Ribera. He writes a play, which, being fortunately hissed and hooted by the populace, gets him a good pension from his patron, who obstinately admires it and says, “Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni.” There is an amusing account of a dinner which Fabricio gives to his literary friends, where they discuss the question what constitutes the chief interest in the Iphigenia of Euripides, one of the guests solemnly maintaining that it was not the peril of the heroine, but the wind. “I take the part of the Greeks,” says Melchior de Villegas. “I espouse their purpose. I only wish for the departure of their fleet, and I look with an indifferent eye upon Iphigenia in her peril, since her death is a means of obtaining from the gods a favorable wind.”
Le Sage is almost as hard upon the doctors as Molière. Dr. Sangrado has become a type. He was so expeditious that he did not often give time for any of his patients to call a notary in order to make a will. After they had been bled to death, he always insisted that they died because they had not been bled enough and had not taken enough hot water. The doctor admitted to Gil Blas that he did not often cure his patients, and that if he were not so sure of his principles he might have been tempted to think that his bleeding and hot water had really injured them, but that he could not change his methods because he had published a book! In his last interview with Gil Blas, the good doctor (now retired from practice) deplores the decadence of medicine, but is caught by his own pupil drinking wine in violation of his own precepts.
All through the book stories of the events of their own lives are told by the principal characters. The robbers in the cave, Doña Mencia, Don Alphonso, Don Raphael, Scipio, and others, all give us their histories, which resemble in miniature the principal narrative. The novel is a very long one, and although it is well written everywhere, the latter part contains some incidents which seem like repetitions, and the interest is not held quite up to the standard of the earlier books.
“Gil Blas” is an admirable prose satire, a satire written with the light raillery of Horace rather than the invective of Juvenal. It sparkles everywhere with French wit, and though the scene is laid in Spain (the model for that kind of story being the early Spanish tales like “Lazarillo de Tormes”), yet the style and the characters are essentially French, and many of the latter are taken from the acquaintance of the author himself. The illusion, however, is well maintained, and it is only upon rare occasions (such as the raillery of the petits maîtres) that one notices characteristics which do not seem quite at home in Spain. Near the close of the book there are a number of historical characters (Spanish, of course), but these are by no means the liveliest or best. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether “Gil Blas” has not rather suffered than gained by the introduction of its historical features.
I have noticed that while I can enjoy “Don Quixote” perhaps better in the translation than the original, “Gil Blas,” on the other hand, sounds more natural to me in a Spanish version than in the original French. This may be mere fancy, or perhaps it may be attributed to this, that “Gil Blas,” being a foreign production, seems more natural after having been acclimated, as it were, by translation into the language of the country in which its scenes are laid. “Don Quixote,” on the other hand, being thoroughly Spanish does not lose its national characteristics, no matter what the language in which it is communicated to the reader.