Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844

Much I mused and conjectured what her history might be, and frequently I felt tempted to address myself in conversation to her; but still there was a tranquillity and repose in those long eyelashes which I feared to disturb. It was probable that she preferred her own reflections, melancholy as they might be, to any intercourse with others, and out of respect to this wish I remained silent. Not so, however, my fellow-traveller of her own sex, who, far from practising this forbearance, felt that she acted the kind and social part by engaging her in conversation. And so perhaps she did. For certainly, after some time, the beautiful   and pensive girl became communicative, and I overheard the brief history of her sufferings, which I had felt so curious to know. It was indeed brief—it is not a three-volumed novel that one overhears in a stage-coach—but it had the charm of truth to recommend it. I had been lately reading Eugene Sue’s romance, The Mysteries of Paris, and it gave an additional interest to remark, that the simple tale I was listening to from the lips of the living sufferer bore a resemblance to one of its most striking episodes.

The shades of evening were closing round us, and the rest of the passengers seemed to be preparing themselves for slumber, as, leaning forward on my leathern supporter, I listened to the low sweet voice of the young stranger.

“You are surprised,” she said in answer to some remark made by her companion, “that one of our sex, so young and of so delicate health, should travel alone in the diligence; but I have no relative in Paris, and no friend on whose protection I could make a claim. I have lived there alone, or in something worse than solitude.”

Her companion, with a woman’s quickness of eye, glanced at the rich toilette of the speaker. It was mourning, but mourning of the most costly description.

“You think,” she continued, replying to this glance, “that one whose toilette is costly ought not to be without friends; but mine has been for some time a singular condition. Wealth and a complete isolation from the world have been in my fate strangely combined. They married me”–

“What! are you a married woman and so young?” exclaimed the lady who was addressed.

“I have been; I am now a widow. It is for my husband that I wear this mourning. They took me from the convent where I was educated, and married me to a man whom I was permitted to see only once before the alliance was concluded. As I had been brought up with the idea that my father was to choose a husband for me, and as the Count D– was both handsome and of agreeable manners, the only qualities on which I was supposed to have an opinion, there was no room for objection on my part. The marriage was speedily celebrated. My husband was wealthy. Of that my father had taken care to satisfy himself; perhaps it was the only point on which he was very solicitous. For I should tell you that my father, the only parent I have surviving, is one of those restless unquiet men who have no permanent abode, who delight in travelling from place to place, and who regard their children, if they have any, in the light only of cares and encumbrances. There is not a capital in Europe in which he has not resided, and scarcely a spot of any celebrity which he has not visited. It was therefore at the house of a maiden aunt—to whom I am now about to return—that I was married.

“I spent the first years of my marriage, as young brides I believe generally do, in a sort of trouble of felicity. I did not know how to be sufficiently thankful to Heaven for the treasure I found myself the possessor of; such a sweetness of temper and such a tenderness of affection did my husband continually manifest towards me. After a short season of festivity, spent at the house of my aunt, we travelled together without any other companion towards Paris, where the Count had a residence elegantly fitted up to receive us. The journey itself was a new source of delight to one who had been hitherto shut up, with her instructress, in a convent. Never shall I forget the hilarity, the almost insupportable joy, with which the first part of this journey was performed. The sun shone out upon a beautiful landscape, and there was I, travelling alone with the one individual who had suddenly awoke and possessed himself of all my affections—travelling, too, with gay anticipations to the glorious city of Paris, of which I had heard so much, and in which I was to appear with all the envied advantages of wealth.

“As we approached towards Paris, I noticed that my husband became more quiet and reserved. I attributed it to the fatigue of travelling, to which my own spirits began to succumb; and as the day was drawing to a close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the   least symptom before, he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. It was now night. Leaning back in the carriage, and fixing my eye upon the full moon that was shining brightly upon us, I tried to quiet my own spirit, somewhat ruffled by this unexpected behaviour of my husband. I observed, after a short time, that his eye also had become riveted on the same bright object; but not with any tranquillizing effect, for his countenance grew every minute more and more sombre. On a sudden he called aloud to the postilion to stop—threw open the carriage-door, and walked in a rapid pace down towards a river that for some time had accompanied our course. I sprang after him. I overtook, and grasped him as he was in the very act of plunging into the river. O my God! how I prayed, and wept, and struggled to prevent him from rushing into the stream. At length he sat down upon the bank of the river; he turned to me his wild and frenzied eye—he laughed—O Heaven! he was mad!

“They had married me to a madman. Cured, or presumed to be cured, of his disorder, he had been permitted to return to society; and now his malady had broken out again. He who was to be my guide and protector, who was my only support, who took the place of parent, friend, instructor—he was a lunatic!

“For three dreadful hours did I sit beside him on that bank—at night—with none to help me—restraining him by all means I could devise from renewed attempts to precipitate himself into the river. At last I succeeded in bringing him back to the carriage. For the rest of the journey he was quiet; but he was imbecile—his reason had deserted him.

“We arrived at his house in Paris. A domestic assisted me in conducting him to his chamber; and from that time I, the young wife, who the other morning had conceived herself the happiest of beings, was transformed into the keeper of a maniac—of a helpless or a raving lunatic. I wrote to my father. He was on the point of setting out upon one of his rambling expeditions, and contented himself with appealing to the relatives of my husband, who, he maintained, were the proper persons to take charge of the lunatic. They, on the other hand, left him to the care of the new relations he had formed by a marriage, which had interfered with their expectations and claims upon his property. Thus was I left alone—a stranger in this great city of Paris, which was to have welcomed me with all its splendours, and festivities, and its brilliant society—my sole task to soothe and control a maniac husband. It was frightful. Scarcely could I venture to sleep an hour together—night or day—lest he should commit some outrage upon himself or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk under it; but, by God’s good providence, the malady of my husband took a new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon other vital parts of the constitution. He wasted away and died. I indeed live; but I, too, have wasted away, body and soul, for I have no health and no joy within me.”

Just at this time a low murmuring conversation between my two fellow-countrymen, at my left, broke out, much to my annoyance, into sudden exclamation.

“By God! sir,” cried one of them, “I thrashed him in the Grande Place, right before the hotel there—what’s its name?—the first hotel in Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he did it again I would punish him; that is, I did not exactly tell him—for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, of which I could not speak a word—but I held out my fist in a significant manner, which neither man nor brute could mistake. Well, just as we turned into the Grande Place, the lubber grazed my wheel again. I jumped out of the carriage—I pulled him—boots and all—off his horse, and how I cuffed him! My friend Lord L– was standing at the window of the hotel, looking out for my arrival, and was witness to this exploit. He was most dead with laughter when I came up to him.”

“I once,” said his interlocutor,   “thrashed an English postilion after the same fashion; but your Russian, with his enormous boots, must have afforded capital sport. When I travel I always look out for fun. What else is the use of travelling? I and young B–, whom you may remember at Oxford, were at a ball together at Brussels, and what do you think we did? We strewed cayenne pepper on the floor, and no sooner did the girls begin to dance than they began incontinently to sneeze. Ladies and gentlemen were curtsying, and bowing, and sneezing to one another in the most ludicrous manner conceivable.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Excellent! By the way,” rejoined the other, “talking of Brussels, do you know who has the glory of that famous joke practised there upon the statues in the park? They give the credit of it to the English, but on what ground, except the celebrity they have acquired in such feats, I could never learn.”

“I know nothing of it. What was it?”

“Why, you see, amongst the statues in the little park at Brussels are a number of those busts without arms or shoulders. I cannot call to mind their technical name. First you have the head of a man, then a sort of decorated pillar instead of a body, and then again, at the bottom of the pillar, there protrude a couple of naked feet. They look part pillar and part man, with a touch of the mummy. Now, it is impossible to contemplate such a figure without being struck with the idea, how completely at the mercy of every passer-by are both its nose—which has no hand to defend it—and its naked toes, which cannot possibly move from their fixed position. One may tweak the one, and tread upon the other, with such manifest impunity. Some one in whom this idea, no doubt, wrought very powerfully, took hammer and chisel, and shied off the noses and the great toes of several of these mummy-statues. And pitiful enough they looked next morning.”

“Well, that was capital!”

“And the best of it is, that even now, when the noses have been put on again, the figures look as odd as if they had none at all. The join is so manifest, and speaks so plainly of past mutilation, that no one can give to these creatures, let them exist as long as they will, the credit of wearing their own noses. The jest is immortal.”

The recital of this excellent piece of fun was followed by another explosion of laughter. The Frenchman who sat opposite to me—a man, as I have said, of grave but urbane deportment, became curious to know what it was that our neighbours had been conversing about, and which had occasioned so much hilarity. He very politely expressed this wish to me. If it was not an indiscretion, he should like to partake, he said, in the wit that was flowing round him; adding, perhaps superfluously, that he did not understand English.

“Monsieur, I am glad of it,” I replied.

Monsieur, who concluded from my answer that I was in a similar predicament with respect to the French language, bowed and remained silent.

Here the conversation to my left ceased to flow, or subsided into its former murmuring channel, and I was again able to listen to my fair neighbours to the right. The lively dame who sat by my side had now the word; she was administering consolations and philosophy to the young widow.

“At your age health,” said she, “is not irretrievable, and, sweet madam, your good looks are left you. A touch of rouge upon your cheek, and you are quite an angel. And then you are free—you will one day travel back again to Paris with a better escort than you had before.”

And here she gave a sigh which prepared the hearer for the disclosure that was to follow.

“Now I,” she continued, “have been married, but, alas! am not a widow. I have a husband standing out against me somewhere in the world. In the commercial language of my father, I wish I could cancel him.”

“What! he has deserted you?” said her fair companion, in a sympathizing tone.

“You shall hear, my dear madam. My father, you must know, is a plain citizen. He did not charge himself with the task of looking out a husband for his girls; he followed what he called the English plan—let the girls look out for themselves, and contented   himself with a veto upon the choice, if it should displease him. Now, Monsieur Lemaire was a perfect Adonis; he dressed, and danced, and talked to admiration; no man dressed, danced, or talked better; his mirth was inexhaustible—his good-humour unfailing.”

Well, thought I to myself, what is coming now? This lady, at all events, chose with her own eyes, and had her own time to choose in. Is her experience to prove, that the chance of securing a good husband is much the same, let him be chosen how he may?

“No wonder, then,” continued the lady, “that I accepted his proposal. The very thought of marrying him as paradise; and I did marry him.”

“And so were really in paradise?” said the widow, with a gentle smile.

“Yes, yes! it was a paradise. It was a constant succession of amusements; theatre, balls, excursions—all enjoyed with the charming Lemaire. And he so happy, too! I thought he would have devoured me. We were verily in paradise for three months. At the end of which time he came one morning into the room swinging an empty purse in the air—‘Now, I think,’ said he with the same cheerful countenance that he usually wore, ‘that I have proved my devotion to you in a remarkable manner. Another man would have thought it much if he had made some sacrifice to gain possession of you for life; I have spent every farthing I had in the world to possess you for three months. Oh, that those three months were to live over again! But every thing has its end.’ And he tossed the empty purse in his hand.

“I laughed at what I considered a very pleasant jest; for who did not know that M. Lemaire was a man of ample property? I laughed still more heartily as he went on to say, that a coach stood at the door to take me back to my father, and begged me not to keep the coachman waiting, as in that case the fellow would charge for time, and it had taken his last sou to pay his fare by distance. I clapped my hands in applause of my excellent comedian. But, gracious Heavens! it was all true! There stood the coach at the door, the fare paid to my father’s house, and an empty purse was literally all that I now had to participate with the gay, wealthy, accomplished Lemaire.”

“What!” I exclaimed with rage and agony, as the truth broke upon me, “do you desert your wife?”

“Desert my charming wife!” he replied. “Ask the hungry pauper, who turns his back upon the fragrant restaurant, if he deserts his dinner. You are as beautiful, as bright, as lovely as ever—you cannot think with what a sigh I quit you!”

“But”–and I began a torrent of recrimination.

“‘But,’ said he, interrupting me, ‘I have not a sou. For you,’ he continued, ‘you are as charming as ever—you will win your way only the better in the world for this little experience. And as for me—I have been in Elysium for three months; and that is more than a host of your excellent prudent men can boast of, who plod on day after day only that they may continue plodding to the end of their lives. Adieu! my adorable—my angel that will now vanish from my sight!’ And here, in spite of my struggles, he embraced me with the greatest ardour, and then, tearing himself away as if he only were the sufferer, he rushed out of the room. I have never seen him since.”

“And such men really exist!” said the young widow, moved to indignation. “For so short a season of pleasure he could deliberately compromise the whole of your future life.”

“Is it not horrible? His father, it seems, had left him a certain sum of money, and this was the scheme he had devised to draw from it the greatest advantage. Mais, mon Dieu!” added the lively Frenchwoman, “of what avail to afflict one’s-self? Only if he would but die before I am an old woman! And then those three months”–

Here the diligence suddenly stopped, and the conductor opening the door, invited us to step out and take some refreshment, and so put an end for the present to this medley conversation.

WHO WROTE GIL BLAS?

In the year 1783, Joseph Francisco De Isla, one of the most eminent of modern Spanish writers, published a Spanish translation of Gil Blas. In this work some events were suppressed, others altered, the diction was greatly modified, the topographical and chronological errors with which the French version abounded were allowed to remain, and the Spanish origin of that celebrated work was asserted on such slender grounds, and vindicated by such trifling arguments, as to throw considerable doubt on the fact in the opinion of all impartial judges. The French were not slow to seize upon so favourable an occasion to gratify their national vanity; and in 1818, M. le Comte François de Neufchateau, a member of the French Institute and an Ex-minister of the Interior, published a dissertation, in which, after a modest insinuation that the extraordinary merit of Gil Blas was a sufficient proof of its French origin, the feeble arguments of Padre Isla were triumphantly refuted, and the claims of Le Sage to the original conception of Gil Blas were asserted, to the complete satisfaction of all patriotic Frenchmen. Here the matter rested, till, in 1820, Don Juan Antonio Llorente drew up his reasons for holding the opinion of which Isla had been the unsuccessful advocate, and, with even punctilious courtesy, transmitted them before publication to M. Le Montey, by whose judgment in the matter he expressed his determination to abide. M. Le Montey referred the matter to two commissioners—one being M. Raynouard, a well-known and useful writer, the other M. Neufchateau, the author whom Llorente’s work was intended to refute.

This literary commission seems to have produced as little benefit to the public as if each of the members had been chosen by a political party, had received a salary varying from £1500 to £2000 a-year, and been sent into Ireland to report upon the condition of the people, or into Canada to discover why French republicans dislike the institutions of a Saxon monarchy. To be sure, the advantage is on the side of the French academicians; for, instead of sending forth a mass of confused, contradictory, and ill-written reports, based upon imperfect evidence, and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of the three French savans, to the impossibility of finding any thing to say, after the lapse of a year and a half publishes his arguments, and appeals to literary Europe as the judge “en dernier ressort” of this important controversy. Llorente, however, was too precipitate; for on the 8th of January 1822, M. de Neufchateau presented to the French Academy an answer to Llorente’s observations, on which we shall presently remark.

It is maintained by the ingenious writer, Llorente—whose arguments, with such additions and remarks as have occurred to us upon the subject, we propose to lay before our readers,

1st, That Gil Blas and the Bachiller de Salamanca were originally one and the same romance.

2dly, That the author of this romance was at any rate a Spaniard.

3dly, That his name was Don Antonio de Solis y Ribadeneira, author of Historia de la Conquista de Méjico.

4thly, That Le Sage turned the single romance into two; repeating in both the same stories slightly modified, and mixing them up with other translations from Spanish novels.

As the main argument turns upon the originality of Le Sage considered as the author of Gil Blas, we shall first dispose in a very few words of the third proposition; and for this purpose we must beg our readers to take for granted, during a few moments, that Gil Blas was the work of a Spaniard, and to enquire, supposing that truth sufficiently established, who that Spaniard was.