The Disgraced Page (1643)
By Tristan L’Hermit
Translated by Robert Levine
Chapter One
Prelude of the disgraced page
Dear Thirinte, I know
very well that my resistance is useless, and that you unequivocally want to
know the entire course of my life, and what the state of my fortunes has been
until now. Moreover, I have not decided to permit your curious desire to
languish, but I have undertaken the task of attempting to satisfy it. How shall
I have the temerity to bring to the light of day such trivial adventures? How
is it possible that you might derive sweetness from matters in which I found so
much bitterness? And what was so difficult for me to bear might be agreeable
for you to read? What then will be said about my temerity in having dared to
write my life myself in a style so lacking in grace and strength, since people
have even dared to blame one of the finest wits of this time because he
sometimes puts himself into the noble and lively essays that came from his pen?
It is true that this marvelous genius sometimes speaks of himself favorably in
depicting himself; and I might say that, since I have nothing about which to praise
myself in this work, I don’t intend to do more than complain about myself in
it. I am not writing a fine poem, in which I wish to introduce myself as a
hero; I am tracing a deplorable story, in which I appear only as an object of
pity, and as a toy of the passions of the stars and of Fortune. The tale will
not shine with glorious ornament; the truth will merely present itself so badly
dressed that some may call it stark naked. Here you will not see a painting to
be flattering, but only a faithful copy of a lamentable original, like a
reflection in a mirror. I also have considerable cause to fear that my
excessive artlessness may provoke disgust in you as you read it. Certainly
making things up for a tale produces a more charming effect than telling truths,
since normally what actually happens in life is either ordinary or rare.
However, until this moment, my life has been so varied, and my travels and
amatory adventures have been so filled with setbacks, that their variety will
be able to give you pleasure. I have divided this entire story into small
sections, fearing to bore you with too long a discourse, and to make it easier
for you to leave me wherever what I am saying becomes less pleasing to you.
Chapter II
The origin and birth of the disgraced page
Descended from a respectable lineage, I
bear the name of a famous nobleman, who was, both in speech and in battle,
another Pericles. History praises him profusely for having been one of the
leaders of that blessed war which was waged in the Holy Land 500 long years
ago; and I may also say that there were many great honors and rewards bestowed
at other times upon our family. But even as perpetual change rules in all
matters, and according to the hidden and just laws of divine providence meager
fortunes rise and great ones are wiped out, since my birth I have watched the
prosperity of my forefathers evaporate.
Two divisions of the patrimony, one of which was made among nine
children, diminished its size significantly. But a protracted criminal trial in
which my father was involved from the time he was 17 years old very nearly
ruined him. This affair was very costly to this nobleman, and had he not shown
great fortitude in his youth, this misfortune would have cost him his life. I
shall not go into great detail about the whole lengthy, lamentable adventure,
and to want to put it down on this paper would require writing the History of
the Hardy Squire, and not the adventures of the disgraced page. It will suffice
to tell you that one of the greatest captains of our age, and one of the most
beautiful and most excellent women of the world, labored to help him, and with
the help of his friends, a royal pardon miraculously arrived, freeing him
gloriously from such a dangerous situation.
It was during this time that he made the
acquaintance of a noble, very worthy old gentleman who, finding my father
appealing and articulate, proposed to make him his son-in-law, even though my
father was from a province very far from his own, and he did not know the exact
state of my father’s financial condition. The matter was not difficult to
accomplish; the gentleman, who had many powerful friends and a lively mind, did
so many favors for my father, and generated in him such affection, that he soon
agreed to marry his daughter, and soon after brought her to the land of my
birth. Two or three years later I was born, and those who have examined my
horoscope carefully find that Mercury was very much disposed towards me, and
the Sun was favorable; it is true that Venus, who was in powerful opposition,
gave me strong inclinations which produced my disgraces. I believe that these
first impressions from the stars leave natural imprints that are difficult to
erase, and that they never compel, but ceaselessly prod. It is said that the
wise man can overcome this divine violence; but it is also necessary that he be
truly wise, and such men are rarely to be found. A good upbringing needs great help from philosophy to fight
successfully and continually against its natural enemies, who, like hydras,
ceaselessly reproduce themselves, and often grow stronger by being defeated.
Holy people, those whose souls look only upon the heavens, and who are
constantly, day and night, assailed by dangerous temptations, against which
they have no assurance at all of victory in their great battles, would
certainly agree. It is true that, to magnify their worth, God permits the
demons to interfere with them; and then it is a strange cause that always makes
us evil suggestions.
Chapter III
The childhood and upbringing of the disgraced page
I was scarcely three
years old when my maternal grandmother came to see her daughter, and, driven by
that burning and natural love which is transmitted through the blood, she asked
to supervise my education; thus I underwent a change of scenery, and having
known until that time only the trees and peacefulness of the country, I came to
look upon the various urban ornaments, and the tumult of one of the best known
cities in the world. I have often been told that at this early age I showed a
very lively intelligence, and an insatiable curiosity, and great pleasure and
care were taken to satisfy my demands. The crowd of objects that presented
themselves to my eyes with such variety was not capable of satisfying the
vivacity of my mind; I concerned myself with things that were more substantive
than those things customarily digested at a tender age. I took a zealous
interest in things which concerned the other life and the mysteries of our
religion. One of my close relatives, a prince of the church, was astounded by
the things he heard said about me, and was even more surprised when, while
hugging me one day and teasing me about the questions I had asked about the
shape of hell, I indicated to him in my way of expressing myself that I doubted
that there were shades where so many big fires were blazing.
I shall tell you that I
was scarcely more than four years old when I learned to read, and that I began
to take pleasure reading romances, thanks to my grandmother and my grandfather,
when, to divert me from this useless reading, they sent me to schools to learn
the elements of the Latin language. I devoted time to it, but not
whole-heartedly; I learned much, but it was with the kind of disgust one feels
for a tasteless food, so that it hardly did me any good. I had been given too
much freedom to taste agreeable things, and when I was forced to concern myself
with other matters more useful but difficult, I found myself not at all so
disposed. I learned because I feared the whips, but I hardly retained anything
I learned. In a moment I lost the treasures that had been crammed into me by
force, and I found them again only by force, because I had no feeling for them.
Chapter IV
How the disgraced page entered the service of a
prince
Study had made me so
melancholy that I was unable to take it any more, when a piece of good luck
happened that changed my way of life: my father had had the honor of serving
one of the greatest and most famous princes of the world during the wars; and
this thoroughly regal soul, who had no other passion than to do good to
everyone, this prince, I say, whose memory will never die, recollected a time
when my father had served him faithfully, and to show his noble gratitude,
having inquired if he had children, ordered him to present me to him, declaring
that he wanted me to be brought up with one of his own children. My
grandmother, transported with joy at the pleasing news, paid for my outfit and
equipment for such a lovely opportunity, and I had the honor of going to greet
these princes in the company of my father and maternal uncle, a man renowned
for his achievements and of great influence. I was astonished by the
magnificence and beauty of the palace into which they brought me, and
principally by the splendor that shone forth from these two divine persons to
whom I was given: the father liked my looks, and honored me with special
caresses, and the son accepted and received me favorably.
We were nearly the same
age and physique, but he was remarkably handsome, and of a nobility of mind
which gave abundant evidence of the abilities which since then have been
fulfilled with interest. At our first meeting I received in my heart a strong
and accurate impression of his merit; and since he was frank and uninhibited,
he felt great affection for me, either because he secretly sensed my
enthusiasm, or because of his natural inclination. From the time that I entered
his service, one might say that I was truly linked to him: the perfections of
the master were powerful chains for the servant. I was always as close to him
as his shadow; I watched him from the moment that he opened his eyes, and never
stopped watching him until sleep closed them. I was the spectator and mimic of
all of his activities; I was present while he prayed, while he studied, and
while he amused himself in every way. My master did not have a pedant for a
teacher: the person chosen to teach him was a highly competent man of letters,
who had him learn the finest parts of history and morality while playing. This
great man knew perfectly the art of educating children, and gave evidence of
this knowledge when he taught one of my relatives, who was perhaps, as everyone
agreed, one of the most eloquent and skilled
individuals of our time.
This man paid particular
attention to my education in just recognition of the obligation he had to my
people; but the ardent zeal he had for furthering the interests of his main
pupil prevented him from paying enough attention to protecting me. He did take
the trouble to teach me everything that he showed to my master which might
enable me to make the right kind of acquaintances and to behave properly, but
he was unable to pay the attention that was necessary to prevent me from seeing
and following the bad examples set by the many young libertines I saw in the
house. I would have needed a teacher as worthy as he for myself alone, who
would have kept a constant, close eye on me. Youth, prone to excesses, is so
subject to developing bad habits that it takes very little to corrupt it. It is
a tabula rasa for good or evil impressions, but it is much more
susceptible to bad than to good ones.
There are some men whose good behavior grows stronger in circumstances
that encourage vice, but it would practically miraculous to see children
preserving their spotless innocence in bad company. I had not been in that
court very long without seeing bad behavior there, and without taking on a
tincture of turpitude.
Chapter V
The friendship developed by the disgraced page with
another page of the house, whose friendship became detrimental to him.
I had only one comrade
who was in the same position as I was with my master, and he was given the same
treatment as I; he was the child of illustrious birth, and he showed that he
was a noble child. I respected him and loved him very much, because of his good
heart and disposition.; we strove for the favors of our master without envy; he
was not jealous that my memory was much better than his, and unfortunately he gave
me no competition for good judgment, of which he had more than I. I often
whispered to make him remember things that he had forgotten; but he was always
able to warn me about what concerned my duties. He was so wise a boy that I
never was able to go wrong when I was with him; but my evil fate wanted me to
make the acquaintance of the most malicious and mischievous page in the court.
I have reason to believe that he was the instrument who was used by my evil
genius to tempt and to destroy me.
This evil demon in
disguise cleverly knew how to interrupt the happy progress of my studies, by
secretly showing me the subtle teachings of an art which led only to the
damnation of souls. It was he who first taught me how to throw dice and play
cards, and who, taking advantage of my innocence to seize the little money I
had, drove me mad with the desire to recover my losses, and to plunge me
constantly more deeply into calamity by fueling the flames of a deceptive and
mad hope. He stamped this passion upon
me in such a way that it soon grew as strong as my passion for study, and for
some time I was hardly every without dice in my writing case or cards among my
books; this dissoluteness went so far that I often neglected things that I had
to learn, and instead of turning the pages of books I turned nothing but cards.
Our teacher soon learned of my debauchery, but he could not get me away from
it. In vain he used his whips and his precepts on this subject; the sickness
was already too deeply rooted. With tears in my eyes, I often promised to stop
playing, but as soon as he was out of sight, I had three dice or a pair of
cards in my hands. What made me even more incorrigible was the fact that the
fineness of my mind at such a young age had gained me notable friends, who
prevented me from reforming. Whenever I
believed that I had been caught and thought that I would have to answer to my
teacher, I went and threw myself into the arms of powerful people, who
protected me. Many young princes with whom I had the honor of being acquainted
time and again obtained pardon for me; relying on their tolerance, I conceived
a strong expectation of sinning with impunity.
Consider for a moment
that the powerful people whose favor should have been advantageous to me were
unfortunately working for my demise!
And consider how the good qualities that I had enabled me to find ways
to behave badly. Finally, the love I
had for gaming made me feel disgust for the wormwood of grammatical
studies. I found pleasures everywhere
except in study, and, instead of doing my lessons. I set about reading and
reciting frivolous stories. My memory was prodigious, but it was an arsenal
fortified only with utterly useless weapons. I was a living index of romances
and fabulous tales; I was capable of charming all indolent ears; I was a
bottomless well of chatter for all kinds of different people, and could amuse
people of all ages. I could tell, in an easy, pleasing manner, all the tales
known to us, from those of Homer and Ovid to those of Aesop and the Ass’ Skin.
When the court stayed in
some of the royal homes, all the young princes had their apartments lined up in
a row; and it was during those times that I had more freedom to go speak to
them. There was often one of them who, finding himself indisposed, asked our
teacher for me to spend time with him, and to put him to sleep with my stories.
Their health was so precious that on this occasion no one was concerned about
the time I was losing, and I myself was delighted to be losing it. It was at
that time, when I was considered necessary as an entertainer for am aristocrat,
that I boldly undertook some foolhardy actions. Since I could rely on someone
who would intervene for me, I went comfortably to gamble, and to increase my
losses, together with one of my peers. My teacher sometimes had whole lists of
misdemeanors that I had committed, and I had deserved to be whipped more than a
dozen times for them. And yet it only cost me a tear or two, which fear made me
spill, and some sad supplication addressed elegantly to one of these young
stars. I remember one of them, a very important person, who often asked pardon
for me while he was alive, and after his death I was often forgiven in honor of
his memory.
Chapter VI
Deplorable death of one of the masters of the
disgraced page.
This young sun had not yet begun to shine, and he gave incomparable,
miraculously great hopes of having divine qualities. He was extremely handsome,
but he was even more gifted in mind and judgment, and he spoke with such rationality
and sensibility, that he captured the imagination of everyone who approached
him. Great minds have noticed this
beautiful life, which was both brilliant and yet so brief that it passed like a
flash of lightning. I shall say nothing about his qualities of mind which are
possiblymait as numerous and as worthy
of memory as many others which we might value. I shall only remark here about
one childish trait of his naturally compassionate nature. One evening, when he
was not feeling good, his governess, a wise, thoughtful woman, renowned for her
virtue, advised him to send for me to amuse him for a few hours with my
fabulous stories; and since I wanted to offer a story to fit my listener, I had
recourse to the fables of Aesop. That prevented him from looking for amusement
in other areas, which had upset him; and since his health demanded that he rest
for a while, I had the honor of conversing with him several times. After his
patience and curiosity had exhausted my store of other stories where animals
argue with each other, I began to tell him a certain adventure of a wolf and a
lamb drinking together at the stream of a spring. I told him how the wolf, who
was drinking downstream of the lamb came to accuse him of spoiling his water
out of ill will; I described to him the humble, modest reply of this gentle
animal, who was not apt at quarrelling. Then I described how the wolf, looking
for another pretext to devour this innocent, reproached him by claiming that he
remembered the lamb bleating in the early morning in a sheep pen two years ago,
and the shepherds woke up and beat his grandfather; then the lamb replied that
that could not be possible, since he himself was only two months old. At this
point, this young prince, seeing where things were going, quickly pulled his
little arms out of the bed, and in a voice full of fear cried out, almost with
tears in his eyes: “Ah! Little page, I see clearly that you are going to say
that the wolf ate the lamb. I beg you to say that he did not eat him.”
This characteristic compassion was expressed so tenderly and in a such a
pleasing manner that everyone watching was overwhelmed with admiration, and I
myself was so powerfully touched that consideration for him instantly compelled
me to change the ending of my story to satisfy the feelings of this little
wonder; and the change was done so smoothly that hardly anyone could have
detected my compassionate alteration.
After receiving such an honor, I did not fail to return to this royal
retreat, and I presented him with an
opportunity to help me out, that is, I implored him to prevent someone from
doing me harm. This did me much good, resulting in a n absolute command from
this little prince, who might easily be called great because of his majestic
birth, but much more because of his divine qualities. Oh, that most beautiful
things should be so fragile! This divine flower was not among those flowers
that are called eternal, it was a lily which will hardly last through a
morning. Earth gave him back to Heaven, before having received from him more
than a gleam. And Europe lost through his death great hopes and great fears.
The best physicians were called to treat his illness; and since the men of this
profession hardly ever agree in their judgments, they gave different advice on
the manner of treating him while he was ill, and did not stop quarreling after
he died. However, they were all compelled to swear that there was some
defective element in the young prince’s body which prevented him from retaining
for any length of time his soul, which demonstrated, shortly before it rose to
heaven, that it was luminous. The entire court grieved with good reason, and I
myself felt a powerful and justifiable regret for him.
Chapter VII
How the disgraced page paid court to his master,
who fell ill with a three-day fever.
But I must stop this
digression to return to the worthy master to whom I had been given, who did not
lack good will towards me, and who sometimes joined the efforts to obtain
pardon for me when I erred. I knew very well how to use my time to get him to
do something when necessary. I watched for the days on which, because of the
progress he had made in his studies, and the prudent way in which he had obeyed
the orders of our tutor, he was capable of getting anything he wanted; and then
I would supply him with words, through my comrade, who good naturedly got him
to speak words which brought absolution for me. Often I found myself present
without being seen, when my trial was going on; my master made me hide behind a
tapestry while he argued that my trespasses be forgiven, and by means of his
ardent and persistent prayers he warded off the punishment my sins
deserved. In spite of these ruses, our
tutor did not cease surprising me sometimes so subtly that neither my master
nor any other friendly prince was able to prevent my being punished. To do this, he pretended to know the sins
that I had committed, and smiled at me on the entire day before punishing me;
not believing that I had anything on my conscience, I found myself awoken in
the morning without warning. But when my master was even the slightest bit ill,
everything which might harm his health was of such importance that no one dared
to chastise me during that time, out of fear of provoking his tears and intensifying
his illness. In this way his illnesses increased my own, and gave me the
audacity to undertake everything with insolence. On one occasion he was sick
with a three-day fever, during which I not only had the pleasure of studying
nothing at all, but also the freedom to do whatever I pleased. I was, in
effect, in charge of entertaining my patient; and every day I came up with
fresh surprises with which to give him pleasure and distraction, whose curative
powers were no less than those of the potions he was taking. He had only to
express a desire for anything a man could do and he got it immediately, and it
was I who, according to my moods, provoked him to want everything.
During his illness money
was no object, and I saw to it that he consumed in one month more than he had
spent on entertainment in a year. As though it had not been enough to make him
acquire every sort of toy to amuse himself in bed, like tarot cards,
spillikins, trictracs and other trifles of the palace, I made him spend great
sums to purchase animals, both common and rare, of different prices. I urged
him to purchase quails trained to fight on tables, as they do in England, so
that he might have the pleasure of watching this spectacle, and watching bets
placed by his servants on the outcome. In addition, he had a great number of
fine cocks for the same purpose. Then I made him want to buy for me some
chickens from Barbary, so that, giving them as wives to these brave feathered
captains, we might see a new species of bird emerge from their love. After that
I bought for his amusement three very different parrots for their impressive
size and plumage, two small monkeys, a royal eagle, and two young tamed bears.
With this arrangement, it was said that I had made a Noah’s ark out of the house.
What was worse about this arrangement for the servants was that they had to
leave their lodgings to make room for all of these animals, which had been very
costly for me, and were good for my master. For that same vicious page who had
taught me how to gamble had also taught
me how to make a profit; and I rarely made a significant purchase without
earning some money, which often did not stay with me very long, since as soon
as I met some gamblers I easily lost what I had so easily gained.
Chapter VIII
My master had had many
hard nights, and, since he had a very delicate constitution, giving him
sleeping pills was too risky. Instead,
artificial fountains were used, which, by the gentle sound and coolness that
they exuded in his room, created salutary relief; and, to provide variety, a
lute, whose harmony produced the same effect, was used. I contributed by
inventing another way of getting him to sleep peacefully in the mornings, by
proposing that he acquire a linnet, to be placed at the break of day on the
window of his room; and I was so bold as to tell him that I knew of one that
was more wonderful than the others because it could whistle so pleasantly; and
knowing that difficulty often increases the desire for things, and having
spared no effort or expense to purchase it, I told him that the person to whom
the linnet belonged was enchanted by it, and could not be convinced to sell it
without being offered a great deal of money, and without being told that it was
necessary to help cure his Highness. I said so much in so few words that I
received ten pistols to buy it, and I had made my arrangements to find a
reputable dealer, then I unfortunately met three or four pages whom I knew, who
were shooting dice on the steps of a great gate. For a while I hesitated to
join them, but finally the temptation grew irresistible. I imagined that I
would win, or that I would at least leave the game when I lost half of my
money, but I did neither. I played timidly from the beginning, and after having
lost part of my money, I wanted to battle my misfortune with an obstinacy that
led to losing the rest; so thoroughly that, to purchase the imagined linnet, I
had no more than two quarters of the écu I borrowed on what I had left.
Heavy with anguish, red
with shame, without knowing to what I might resort, I went running through the
village without knowing where I was going. Finally, after a thousand desperate
thoughts, I firmly resolved to pay for the audacity in this adventure, and to
endure resolutely the storm which threatened me. I quickly went to a place
where great numbers of birds were usually sold, but I was unfortunate enough to
find none there; after asking many people where I might get a linnet, I was
sent to a bird-catcher who made a living by supplying large quantities of
birdcages. At the time he was not at home, and his wife was so scrupulous, or
perhaps fearful, that she did not dare let me look at his birds in his absence,
which did not make me despair. Finally, as I was growing uncomfortable because
I could not get a bird quickly, and they had been impatiently waiting for me
for a long time, I saw the bird-catcher return, carrying on his shoulder a net
filled with goldfinchs and greenfinches, among which we were fortunate enough
to find a very beautiful linnet. I asked him to sell it, and I got it for
thirty sous, with a cage.
I quickly returned to the
house, and, pretending to be happier than I was, I bravely showed my wild
linnet to my master, he was very pleased to learn that I had overcome thousands
of obstacles to get this incomparable creature for him. He immediately wanted
to enjoy the pleasure he should get from this expensive acquisition, and he had
all the windows of his room closed, and had everyone withdraw, to make the
little bird, who was less frightened to see people near his cage than he was of
the beaks of the goldfinches in the net, more comfortable with him. One the
first day that I brought him I easily found excuses for its silence, but after
it had been silent two or three days, my excuses wore thin. However, I made a
thousand secret prayers to Heaven for it to untie its tongue; for whatever
little tune my linnet had hummed, I had insisted that it was at least
miraculous, I had so prepared myself to pour praise upon it. But unable to accept
this consolation which was supposed to disguise my misbehavior, and finding
myself troubled by my master’s insistently repeating to me, whenever he looked
at the bird: “What does it mean, little page, that your linnet does not say a
word?” I replied innocently: “Sir, I must reply that her failure to speak does
not indicate that she is not thinking about it.”
At this point the whole
company began to laugh, and even my master, who was the most involved in the
matter, could not prevent himself from doing the same. It is true that after he had been refreshed
with this pleasant emotion he soon had another feeling, which was hardly
agreeable for me, which indicated that he had some fear that I had cheated him
in the purchase. I warded off this attack with enough skill, steadily insisting
that this linnet was first-rate, and that as soon as it felt secure its little
beak would accomplish wonderful things; and, by good luck, as I was testifying
for her, she happened to testify as well for me, spouting out a little song
which silenced my accusers, and compelling my master, pried loose from his
belief that I had swindled him, once again to take up the cause of my true
innocence. Finally time, which had usually revealed the truth, was working
every day to convict me of bad faith, and I was about to take my medicine when
the stars which were looking favorably on me granted me the means to deflect
the blow.
One of my noble relatives
came to see me during this time; judging that I had a very appealing mind and
disposition, he gave me two pistoles to use them to play real tennis; I sowed
them immediately on a table so favorable to the three dice that reaped it that
within moments they multiplied themselves into 25 or 30, and by the time I left
the table I boldly decided to redeem with 10 pistoles the 20 blows of the whip
facing me. For this project I went to look for an actor to help me put on my
act: he was an impetuous footman, to whom I gave elaborate instructions about
everything he would have to say and do to put my mind at ease. Then I composed
myself and went to find my master, and said to him that he should not worry
about the silence of his linnet, and that the money he had given for it would
be returned with good will, and that it would be a great favor to the person
who had sold it if he would give it back for the same price, because she felt
such great regret at the loss of her bird that she had become ill about it. At
that point I gave him ten pistoles from my recent winnings; but even as our
hopes are vain, and as appearances are deceiving, this speech and this action
which I had contrived so carefully to deliver myself from a well-founded fear
served only to increase my difficulties. My master inferred from what I said
that I had made a judgment very favorable for him about something that he had
come to scorn, and he believed that he had bought a great prize at a very low
price; the more I tried to persuade him to stop deceiving himself, the more he
persisted in believing that his linnet was a wonder. I almost became angry with
him, because of the certain knowledge that I had of his error, and because I
was myself an interested party. Here is the kind of thing I believed would
extricate myself from such a tangled web; and it is possible an excuse sufficient
to have been come upon by a child who was only eleven or twelve years old. ???
After having understood that I would get no further talking to my master about
him giving up the linnet, I went to find our tutor and I presented to him the
ten pistols which were supposed to expiate my crime, making him believe that
those from whom I had bought the linnet had sent the pistols back to retain
possession of it, and at the same time I gave the appearance of sincerity that
I had practiced to support my words. Our tutor had already gone beyond the
difficulty of carrying off the bird without the consent of the prince, who was
firm in his resolve to hold on to the things that appealed to his imagination,
when a sobbing woman, who seemed like a woman possessed, threw herself abruptly
among us, asking for justice and mercy; she was the wife of a certain
imprudent, gambling hotel-keeper, from whom I had taken some money when he was
on a losing streak on which he had lost five or six hundred crowns; his wife,
informed of this disgrace, had no second thoughts about what course of action
to take; she believed that all that was necessary to be assured of getting the
money back was to raise a ruckus among those who had won it, who would then
quickly pay some attention to his household,
and to the imprudence of her husband. This demon, having learned that I
was one of those who had gained some part of the sum her husband had lost, made
such a racket in our tutor’s room, that I lost my composure and my speech; I
could not reply to him with one sensible word, I found myself so confused in
this adventure. Our tutor noticed my astonishment, and suspected that the ten
pistols that he had in his hand had come from this direction; but he had no
sooner opened it to show them to this possessed woman than she threw herself
upon them with a great shout, examining each denomination, and telling how the
shares had been divided at her place, to give him the means of putting them
together. ??? At the same time I was whipped, and other coins, trophies of
other adventures, were found in my pocket. The lackey who had been my
co-conspirator happened to be present at this ruckus, and he tried in vain to
escape, and from the moment he found
himself caught in the act (with his doublet down), the naked truth about me was
painfully clear. The intrigue which I had tied with so many knots was dissolved
by this accident, and I was whipped thoroughly, as much for my swindling as for
having invented so many lies, and for having played with three dice.
Chapter IX
The first meeting of the disgraced page with the
debauched schoolboy who wrote verse.
If this adventure did not
reform me completely, at least it served to prevent me from forming the habit
of committing the vices of theft and lying. The confusion in which it left me
had more of an effect on me than the lashes of the whips, and compelled me to
concentrate on my work and on my reading. From that point on I focused my
mind’s abilities on things that gave pleasure to everyone, and which harmed no
one. I soon applied myself to portrait-painting, having great inclination and
aptitude for this art; at others times, when I had leisure, I memorized whole
plays in beautiful verses which were very much in fashion at that time; I know
more than ten thousand lines, which I recited with as much emotion as if I had
myself been filled with the passions they represented. These graceful
performances earned me the friendship of many people, and among others, of a
troupe of actors who came three or four times a week before the whole court,
where my master was among the leading figures. I remember that among the actors
there was one who was famous for expressing sad and angry reactions; he was the
Roscius of that time, and everyone found a secret magic in his monologues. He
was supported by another person who had a fine figure, lively expression, and
powerful voice, but was somewhat inferior to the first in majesty of face and
intelligence. I liked these actors very
much, and sometimes took refuge among them, when I had a secret fear, and my
tutor had shown signs of displeasure. They made much of me because of my
unusual intelligence and memory; and when I went to tell them that I was in
trouble, and that our tutor was looking for me, they found a way to hide me,
and, bringing me with them to the palace when they were going to give a
performance, as soon as my master passed behind their theater to speak with
them while waiting for them to get ready to act, they did not neglect the
opportunity to put in, as a group, a good word for me. My master, who had not
seen me for a day or two, and who knew that I was in trouble, was soon moved by
their request, and immediately went to our tutor, who was unable to resist his
request; when I heard his words make such an effect, I came out from behind the
bass viol where I had taken refuge, and threw myself at the feet of my master
to thank him for the latest favor that he had obtained for me.
On a day that my fists
were really itching, and I had somewhat rudely punched the nose of a young
nobleman my equal in age and strength, but not in skill, I took refuge among
the actors. It was a day on which the actors were not performing, but they
could not exactly call it a day of rest; their debauchery was deafening. Eight
or ten of them were under a trellis in their garden, and they were carrying by
the head and feet a young man wrapped in a dressing gown; his slippers were
scattered, together with his nightcap, in all the corners of the garden; and
the hue and cry that was being made around him was so great that I was
terrified. The victim was not all that compliant, as he indicated by the
insults that he heaped upon them in a very pleasant voice, making his
persecutors howl with glee. Finally I asked one of them, who was less busy,
what this spectacle meant, and what this man had done to be treated in such a
fashion. He told me that the man was a poet in their pay, and he did not want
to play ball, because he was in the mood to write verse; they had finally
decided to compel him to play. At that point I intervened to end the
disagreement, and begged these gentlemen to leave him in peace for my sake; in
this way I released him from the torture. And when he learned who I was, and
his hat and slippers were returned, he came to me to pay his compliments,
treating me as his liberator, and as a person for whom he had great respect.
All of this rhetoric tricks were extraordinary; they were only hyperbole and
witty routines learned at school, bloated with vanity. However, the tenacity
with which he argued was agreeable, and indicated that his natural gifts were
unusual.
As soon as we started a
conversation, having entered a lane where we might talk more peacefully, he
recited for me some verses that he had composed for the theater, and other
works, where I found more imaginative force than delicacy. After listening to
him for a long time, I told him about how the greatest writers of the age
wrote; and I made them sound as though they would appeal to this provincial
poet; but he pretended to admire the fine qualities of my mind, and flattered
my vanity so well that I decided to get my a good position with my master, as
soon as I got back into his good graces. I was moved to work in his favor by
two motives, one was the regard I had for his temperament, the other a sympathy
I had for his bad luck, having learned first that he earned very little money
for writing many lines of verse.
Chapter X
How the disgraced page was saved from the hands of
his tutor
I ate very well with the
actors, and we were still at table, where some continued to drink toasts and
others amused themselves by telling funny stories, when one of the servants
came to warn them that they were wanted at the palace; at the same time they
chose the piece that they had to play and the way they would bring me in; it
was behind the curtain of the door of one of their coaches. And as soon as we
alighted, we meet on the staircase we were climbing one of the great princes of
the land. Two or three of my friends, who were told immediately of my distress,
spoke to him in my defense, and to give weight to their arguments, I suddenly
threw myself at his feet, my face covered with tears. This great prince had
pity on my suffering and fear, and he turned to see if my master would not
follow him in his retinue, to give the tutor direct orders not to whip me this
time. But, unfortunately for me, my master could not be found, and he did not
come to the performance at all because of some small discomfort from which he
was suffering. After the performance was over, I went to appeal for my safety
to the great prince, who was going to bed; to protect me while he was waiting
to obtain pardon for me, he put me in the custody of one of his pages. He was a
significant nobleman of a glorious and valiant race; this boy, proud and feared
by all of his companions, took me into his care, and I clung to a corner of his
coat, which I did not let go for a moment, and that did me some good. The next
morning he brought me to breakfast with him, and we spent the rest of the day
amusing ourselves in many ways, and I clung to him closely; as soon as I
spotted someone from our house, I hid myself under the shelter of his coat. In
the evening my protector decided to try to make some money with two officers of
the prince in the guard room; and when I was witness and judge of the (blows,
strokes, ??), I found myself unexpectedly seized by someone who was on my side
and my judge, who punched me so roughly that he seemed to want to be my
executioner. I had neither the strength nor the courage to cry out at this
surprise, either because I was terrified or because I respected him; but in my
terror I responded like a drowning man, I did not quit my post, I held fast to
the coat tail that I continued to hold in my hands; and my protector, swept up
in the intensity of the game, was unaware that I was under siege until he
finally sensed that he was being stripped of his coat. At that point he turned
around and saw that the swindlers were taking the liberty of stealing in the
royal residence; but, when he saw me in danger, he set out in an unusual way to
free me. He hardly said a word without striking a blow at the same time, and,
since his natural impulsiveness gave me no other way of expressing himself, he
made known to our tutor, while smashing him in the teeth, that I had found
safety. The page’s arm was strong, and the good man’s jaw weak, so that his
mouth was full. He was compelled by this effort to let go of my hand, and to
use both of his to ward off the blows which began to rain down on his face.
Finally, the prince’s guards cried halt, and I withdrew with my defender,
leaving behind my tutor in disarray, gargling and complaining loudly about a
broken tooth and several other loosened ones.
Chapter XI
About the peace patched together (??) between the
disgraced page and his tutor
The next day our tutor
came with my master to find the prince, to make him complain about the bad
treatment he had received, but we had already informed him about what had
happened; and since the action taken by the tutor seemed violent, the prince
had little concern for what he had suffered. He denounced me in vain, he was
compelled to obey this absolute power which ordered him to pardon me. But
although on the he apparently yielded to the authority of legitimate authority,
he continued to nurse a grudge that he considered entirely justifiable. He was
already impatient to find a new pretext for which to punish me for the page’s
insolence, when the occasion presented itself.
The actors’ poet, having
learned that I was back in the good graces of my master, did not hesitate to
come visit me, so that I might introduce him to my master, as I had promised. I
presented him in good will; he had the honor of conversing a half hour with
this young prince, and he even had the satisfaction of receiving an emolument
for these four encomiastic verses, which he composed on the spot:
My muse consecrates, to this handsome prince,
a world of praises, which fly
to the palace of angels,
and are
deathless.
Although these verses
have their faults, we were not capable of discerning them; we only found these
bombastic terms, which he had culled from the direction of the Pyrenees,
pleasing. I don’t know how, in taking his leave of my master, this dissolute
poet unexpectedly uttered some obscenity, which was a habitual part of the way
he spoke. Our tutor found out, and took this pretext to avenge the affront he
had received because of me. The next morning he came to surprise me, and
berated me about the care that needed to be taken to protect a young prince
from new people, attacking me for having been so foolhardy as to present an
unknown, wretched man to my master. But he ended his exhortation with so many
lashes of the whip that I lost hope of seeing them end; and I easily understood
that this punishment owed less to the foul language that had wounded the chaste
ears of my master, than from the boldness of the blow that had broken my
tutor’s teeth.
Chapter XII
How the disgraced page was asked to give his
judgment on a lovely ode.
This harsh rebuke made me
more restrained thereafter, but did nothing to remove my taste for poetry and
the love I had for collecting the most beautiful verses. In the house we had a
courtier who was strong and fastidious, and who was known for having fought
several memorable battles, and for having a capable, sensible mind; this person
had some respect and some good will for me, and sometimes gave me advice that
easily equaled that given by our tutor; for my part, I was also comfortable
continuing our friendship, as the signs of my esteem and the pleasure I took in
speaking with him indicated. He told a story well; and since he was skilled at
arguing about interesting things, he took great pleasure in listening to such
arguments. That is why I always turned to him, when the occasion presented
itself, to recite to him some lovely work of the muses, as soon as I had
learned something new by heart. A young steward in charge of my master’s
kitchen often came to listen to me when I recited some verses, and, by
listening to me recite, imagined that he would be capable of using it to help a
passion that was tormenting him; perhaps he had heard that Love is a master in
all branches of knowledge, and can make even the most recalcitrant minds fly.
One day, while the
courtier and I were talking, and he was searching a collection of poetry for a
poem he admired, this love-struck steward quietly came up to me, took me by the
arm, and whispered in my ear that he had an ode, which was not badly done, he
wanted me to look at; I asked who had written it, and he refused to tell me,
saying only that it was a young man with a lively intelligence, who was in love
with the daughter of a linen-seller; at that point he opened a sheet of paper
on which I could understand nothing; it was a strange scribble, with grotesque
letters badly put together and, to be exact, the hand-writing of someone who
did not know how to write. Our courtier asked what this mysterious secret was,
and if he could be in on it.
I replied to him that
these were verses which could pass for a mystery, since they were difficult to
decipher. But the young steward, who had both composed and inscribed it, too
the occasion to assure our courtier that he was very familiar with this
handwriting, and could read these verses very clearly if we would care to
listen to them. We took him at his word and, growing pale and blushing before
even opening his mouth, he then read his ode, which contained only these four
verses:
My Clorie, My Clorie,
To whom I have given my heart,
All my life I shall be
Your very humble servant.
When he finished speaking
the final line of his verses, he took a deep bow, as though to match the
elegance of what he said with an elegant gesture, and he asked us to judge the
little ode that she had recited to us, adding, to obtain our approval, that the
author of this work had the reputation of being a man of intelligence. At that
point we looked at each other, the courtier and I, and broke out into such a
loud laugh that three or four officers who were in the next room came quickly
to find out what was going on. After having held my sided for a quarter of an
hour without being able to say a word, I finally made them understand that some
carefully polished verses that one of their companions had showed us provoked
us to laugh. But the matter became even more enjoyable when we learned from one
of them that the love-sick steward had shut himself up for two days and two
nights in a cave, and had squandered twenty five sheets of paper to get this
lovely work exactly right.
Chapter XIII
By what adventure the disgraced page gave a proxy
to someone else to be punished in his place.
No calm on any sea lasts
forever: and I lived in peace for only a brief moment before my own passions
provoked a storm. Gambling always made trouble for me, because I was unable to
quit, or to play safely. On the other hand, reading fiction had made my
temperament haughtier and less patient. When I had some trivial disagreement
with my peers, I imagined that I should launch an all-out war, that I was a
Homeric hero, or at least some paladin or knight of the round table. It was not
every day that complaints about the punches I had thrown reached the ears of
our tutor; and what gave him the most discomfort was that he scarcely had the
freedom to punish me because of the powerful support of which I had made use to
protect me. One day, while talking to a monk, he learned that sometimes in his
monastery they gave the young boys who seemed to be incorrigible a form of
admonishment and discipline that often cured them of their bad habits. Our
tutor was delighted to have found this way of punishing me without disturbing
himself in the least, and without my master having the means to intercede for
me.
Having notified this good
Father that he had a bad young rascal, in need of such admonitions, to send to
him, he waited for my first important misstep and, hiding as well as he could
what he knew, gave me the next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, a sealed
letter addressed to the reverend Father; I was very pleased to receive this
fine commission because it gave me liberty to stroll anywhere I wished for an
hour, and as I went down the grand staircase of the palace, I wanted to do
something with some coins in my pocket that were annoying me. I had so little
hope of winning anything with so little money that I bet it all on one throw,
and Fortune, who wanted to keep me among those who follow her and whom she
deceives, pretended this time that she wanted to smile upon me. I made such a
large sum at that moment that I had nearly all the money in the game (??) At
that moment I remembered the commission that I had been given, and spoke of
leaving, showing the letter that I was charged with delivering. But one of the
players, who had lost the most, and who still had some money and some rings to
lose, beseeched me so much not to leave the game that I agreed to his request,
provided, however, that I could find someone to carry my message. A big fellow,
carrying a sword, offered himself as ready for this task, which he promised to
carry out provided that I give him a coin; I gave him a third, so that his pay
might not amount to a fortune.
This fellow, led by
misfortune, carried out his duties, and was mistaken for me. The curses and
terrible oaths that he was able to utter as he insisted that the punishment was
intended for someone else confirmed the belief of the man beating him that he
was the incorrigible rascal who had been sent to him. Then, as I was growing
impatient for his return, and when the game had ended, I see him come back,
pale as death. I feared that he had lost my letter, and that this accident
accounted for his change of facial expression, but he quickly let me know
otherwise, showing me with his fists that his problem was anger. Those who were
present watching us compelled me to give him half a pistole for the painful
trip that he had made for me, after he had told us of his adventure.
As for me, delighted to
have paid such a low price, I went to find our tutor to bring him the reply to
his letter. All I told him was that the good Father kissed his hands, and I
delivered the report sadly, with my eyes fixed on the ground, so that, judging
by my gestures that his plan had been successful, he was unable to suppress a
smile, and he was not disabused of his notion until he again saw the good
father, who told him that I was a great blasphemer, which he could not believe,
since no one had ever reported hearing me swear. But the pleasant story of my
confrontation has been told.
Chapter XIV
How the disgraced page was taken for a magician.
Having escaped this
danger, I became more circumspect in my actions, and firmly resolved to abandon
all the things that might bring down upon me the anger of my tutor, and keep
me, even for a moment, from being with my master. I had no other passion than
to be with him diligently in his studies and in his amusements. His mind was
curious about all pleasant things, and I set about assiduously finding stories
and tales which fit his feelings; sometimes he even gave me secret commissions
to buy books, so that after I read them I could talk to him about them every
evening when he went to bed. One day, among other historical books, by chance I
opened a book by Baptiste Porta, entitled Natural Magic, and, finding in
it some small subjects which seemed appealing to me, I bought it, to try out
some of the things myself. I made a great mystery of this book to the young
prince whom I served, and when our tutor was not present we read all of its
chapters, to see what pleasant invention we ourselves might put into practice,
with the least expense and difficulty. We found the way to use special candles to produce the illusion that
all those present had the heads of animals; but making them seemed difficult.
We very much enjoyed trying another secret of the same kind, which could be
performed easily and inexpensively. It was a combination of camphor and sulfur
mixed with whiskey, whose flame was supposed to make the faces of the departed appear.
Only my comrade was aware of our attempt at this fine spectacle, and I took my
time secretly placing the drugs that I had bought under the bed of my master.
In the evening, when we saw the right time to end our enterprise ?? , my master
said that he wanted to go to sleep, and I went to get a great silver bowl to
make a lantern of my combustible matter. Therefore I lit my death lamp in the
center of the place and extinguished all the torches.
My master quickly got out
of bed to watch this beautiful piece of magic, but we were able to see almost
nothing in our faces, the smoke was so thick; we had to get very close to this
dark light; my master sat down at one side on a velvet pillow, and we were
kneeling on the other side, to look at our faces, which were pale and sometimes
purple. We had not been doing this very long when there was a small sound
behind us, as though something had pressed against the mat on which we were
seated. My master was the first to turn his head, and he saw a new face, which
was uglier than ours, and was dressed in an odd fashion; at the sight of this
strange vision all three of us let out a shout, and my master fainted with
fear.
This frightening phantom
was our tutor, whom the unpleasant smell of our artificial lamp had provoked to
come down from our room to see what it was. He had approached us without making
a sound to surprise us, with a napkin tied around his throat to protect him
against catching a cold, with a red nightshirt, and a cap on his head which
showed that he had no hair, because he wore a wig during the day; in effect, he
was dressed like an old man going to bed. My master, never having seen anything
like this, seeing his face look so haggard because of the false brightness,
almost died of fright; as for my comrade and me, whose temperaments were less
sensitive, we remained frozen in place. Our tutor made so much noise that
servants in a nearby antechamber came running; the lamp that they were carrying showed that the prince
had passed out, and that my companion and I were hardly in much better shape;
the tumult was so great that is almost impossible to describe it; everyone was
crying, weeping, lamenting. One of the servants remembered seeing by chance one
of my books, on whose spine was written Magic, and he said that I had
made some diabolic conjuration which caused this accident: the whole house was
on the point of pouncing on me. But my master soon recovered from his faint,
and by describing the adventure accurately he got me out of trouble; but no
matter what he said to excuse me, I was considered a great criminal, and I
received twenty lashes of the whip for this innocent piece of mischief.
Chapter XV
How the disgraced page struck a cook six times with
a sword, and how he ran away for the first time.
For more than fifteen
days people talked of nothing else but my magic trick, about which each spoke
according to his own temperament. The wisest, considering my intention rather
than the result of my recipe, did not excuse me at all for being young; but the
ignorant exaggerated my fault, and made extravagant statements upon such a
trivial topic. Among the others was a certain brainless cook who was known to
have an inclination to be foolish, and he had decided to frighten me to take
vengeance for having frightened everybody. One evening, when my master was away
in the countryside for two or three days, and I had gone to sleep early because
I had played hand ball so hard all day long, this foolish chef put on a white
shirt over his doublet and sprinkled it with blood; he also put on his head a
turban made out of a towel, with a great quantity of chicken feathers; with
this he took a burning brand and put it to his mouth, and came to draw the
curtain of my bed and to look directly at me in this outfit. I was only
pretending to be asleep, so that he did not have much difficulty making me open
my eyelids. I soon as I saw this ghost, I felt transported by an emotion I
cannot describe. I don’t know what kind of audacity and anger mingled with my
fear, but I certainly know that I jumped immediately for my sword, and that I
furiously attacked the image that was frightening me. I beat it back to my door
with great blows of my sword, unable to understand what it was saying, and I
would have done still more damage if it had not run down the staircase. A
number of people soon came up to my room with torches and, finding me pale with
fear and my sword naked in my hand, asked me what I thought I had done; I
replied that I had chased away a spirit which had come to torment me in my
room. At that point I was assured that it was a cook of the household whom I
had wounded with six blows of the sword, and he was in danger of dying. You can
imagine that I was shocked by this news, and that the idea of the punishment
awaiting me frightened me all night long as much as a second ghost would have.
At soon as day broke the next day, I got dressed to save myself, knowing very
well that no one would make an effort to detain me, because no one in the house
had the authority to lay a hand on me, except our tutor, who had gone to the
countryside with my master. I thought that if I had been whipped brutally for
trivial errors, I would be punished much more for having killed a man; and this
line of reasoning made me panic. I made my way out of the palace, and did not
stop until I had covered ten or twelve leagues. But since I was eager and full
of energy I covered this ground so vigorously that I ended up almost crippled
in a house in a village where I stayed four or five days, without being able to
go any further because of the blisters on my feet.
I had decided to return
to the province in which I was born, to avoid returning to court until I had
grown enough so that there would be no talk of whippings; but as I was about to
leave this house, I was astonished to see an old man who had once served as
valet to my grandfather approaching; this very knowledgeable man, after
accepting the charge of finding me, had made such diligent inquiries about me
all along the road that he finally discovered where I was. First he rid me of
my fears, swearing that they were ill-founded, and that had I killed a man of
higher rank than a cook in such an encounter, I would have done nothing wrong.
I believed some of what he told me, and pretended
to believe it all to
deceive him. The good man looked everywhere for a horse for me, wanting me to
use his own, but he was unable to find one, so that he was compelled to follow
me on foot during this journey. But since he was nearly sixty years old, he
could hardly go two or three leagues without getting tired, and by this time I
found a way of leaving him whenever it struck my fancy; I told him that I would
be very comfortable walking for a quarter of an hour, and that the saddle of
his horse was beginning to make me uncomfortable; the good man quickly agreed
to climb up, and then I made him get down and remount when it seemed to me like
a good idea. When we were no more than a league from the town and I saw that my
guide was very tired, I asked to dismount and proceed on foot, to which he
gladly agreed, and I took a bit of a lead, but he adjusted his stirrups
accordingly. I had left my coat with him, since it prevented me from running,
and he spent some time tying it to the saddle; that gave me time to put some
distance between us, and my feet were no longer bothering me, and I believed
that they could do their job. I left the main road and, hurling myself across
the field, I ran so fast that in a moment my man had lost sight of me, as
though I were one of the rabbits that dogs think they have caught, but end up
only with fuzz. This old servant was certain that he would bring me back to the
house, but he only brought back my coat.
Chapter XVI
Second flight of the disgraced page, for having put
a sword in his hand among the prince’s guards
In the evening I returned
to the town and slept at the home of a nobleman who was a friend of mine, to
whom I told the story; he consoled me kindly, and calmed my frightened mind;
promising to patch things up for me, which he did the next day. My master, who
had not seen me for five or six days, embraced me with great affection when I
returned; and our tutor, in consideration of the dangerous results of my fear,
somewhat relented in his usual severity. Thus I lived tranquilly for a while,
but it did not last, as you are about to hear. I had matured a bit with age, at
thirteen, and decency and shame began to make me blush at the least unseemly
behavior; I became more attentive than ever to reading and to principles, and
no longer gambled, and hardly ever mingled with gamblers or debauchees.
Everyone was astonished at my change, and began to forget my past mistakes in
favor of my recent good behavior. Then Fortune, as though indignant that I had
changed so much and that, after having been fed and nourished by her, I was
apparently abandoning her to embrace virtue,
Showed me, much to my
detriment, what her power was. She took away our tutor, to give him a higher
position, to have greater means to bring me down to the abyss.
To avoid wasting your
time with stories of excessive length, and to avoid opening old wounds that are
still sore, I shall tell you that, when another authority took over, I had some
strange dissatisfactions, and that, by means of unheard-of tactics, I was
separated for several days from the presence of my master. I was of the opinion
that I had been removed from his presence only to deprive me of his good
graces; and that plunged me into such a melancholy mood that I was
unrecognizable. Instead of my customary jumping, fighting, or running with my
peers, I did nothing but daydream. And one day, when I was in one of the royal
residences, a man as distracted as I was unfortunately happened to shock me by
passing by me very rudely. I came out of my deep thoughts and brusquely said
something to him about his lack of consideration. But he, offended by my words,
drew his sword half out of his scabbard, as though he wanted to strike me, and
I had no sword at all, and was of a different social station from him; his
irrational response moved me in a strange way. He could tell by my face and by
what I had said about his cowardice that things would not come out well for
him, and he thought about escaping; but I ran up to the first lackey who went
by and, asking for his sword, instantly trapped this reckless fellow. The
prince’s guards were lined up in the lower courtyard, waiting for his return
from the hunt on which he had gone, and my man thought to take refuge there,
but the blind desire I had to avenge this insult did not give me the leisure to
think reasonably. In spite of the presence of the guards, I gave him two great
blows with the sword; and perhaps I would have given him another, if three or
four lowered lances had not prevented me. The arrogance which I had shown
created a great stir; three or four officers seized me to take me prisoner, but
a lieutenant of the regiment, who knew me, saying that he would keep me under
guard, and that I was not a gentleman to be treated badly, brought me away to
his own lodgings.
My hotheadedness having
passed, fear of the danger I had escaped froze my blood, which had been boiling
with rage; I began to repent my impatience, and to offer prayers for the man
whom I had wished to kill. Five or six soldiers of the company of the
lieutenant who had done me a favor came from time to time, one after the other,
to inform me of the condition of the injured man, who was not in good shape;
and the last one, who came to assure me that the man was in a desperate plight,
at the lodgings of a surgeon, made me decide to flee. I begged the lieutenant
who had done me a good turn to do me another, by going to the castle to find
out what was being said about this matter, and above all to visit the apartment
of my master, to see if he had been informed about this accident, and if he
could obtain pardon for me. But this bad news removed all hope of hearing
anything good. I believed that my life was at stake, and that it was necessary
to save it by going far away. Therefore I secretly left, and, reaching a broad
forest, did not stop until I had traveled nine or ten leagues, and I did them
in an incredibly short time. I tell you that very few people, not merely those
at court but anywhere in France, had as much energy as I had; I often put my
feet together and leaped as far as the tallest men alive; in addition, I leaped
over canals at least 24 feet wide, and I could gallop 300 feet against the
fastest horse in the world. That is why you should not think that I am being
deceitful if I tell you that in less than twelve or fourteen hours I traveled
27 or 28 leagues.
Chapter XVII
The strange encounter of the disgraced page with a
wicked inn-keeper.
My intention when I left
the place where court was being held was only to put as much distance as
possible between me and anyone I knew, and to disguise myself so well that I
would not recognize myself. I accomplished both goals; I took cover in a large
merchant city, which looks out on the Seine on its way to the sea, and there I
rested several days to catch my breath and to prepare myself for a long trip.
There I practiced forgetting my name entirely, and made up a false genealogy
and false adventures, to avoid being surprised if anyone asked questions. When
I set out, I had scarcely more than 15 or 16 pistoles on me, of which no more
than seven or eight remained. With so little help, I considered crossing the
sea to go see Albion, where the poets make so many swans sing. I left from this
big city very late, and since I was no longer so terrified I did not move at the
same speed as I had when fleeing. I had only traveled two leagues from the port
where I embarked. I stayed at a small, remote hotel, where I ate a bit, either
out of weariness or sadness; and they gave me a room with two very fine beds.
I had hardly been asleep
an hour, going over my disgraces in my mind, when I heard my hostess speaking
at my door. Whoever was speaking with her asked for a single room, but she
insisted that there was only one bed left, in a room in which a young boy was
sleeping. When he made some
difficulties, the hostess testified for me, maintaining that I did not look
like someone who would do any harm, that I had the demeanor of a child who had
left his parents to see the country, and that I was so weary from traveling
that she did not think he would get up early in the morning. At that point they
both entered the room, and the mistress went to open the curtain to see if I
was asleep (which I was pretending to be) and, showing my clothing, which was
made of silk, to the defiant traveler, assured him that I was not a person
whose company he needed to fear; he agreed to sleep in this room and had
everything that he needed for dinner brought in; and above all he asked for
more wood, as though he were going to remain awake to write some important
reports; among other things, he asked particularly for a stove and some eggs,
brought to him on a plate, that he wanted to fry in his own way.
When he had been provided
with all of these things, and had shut the door, he came over to my bed,
carrying a candle, to determine more exactly whether I was sleeping; I
continued to pretend to be asleep, and in my turn I watched him very carefully.
I perceived that, after having lit a large fire, he took out of a sack many
different kinds of utensils that he placed very gently next to the fire,
fearing that they might make tnoise; he took some pieces of coal out of the
fire and heating something on them. Then he also placed his stove on the fire,
but the smell was not like that of frying: the butter made no noise, it took
only a slight movement that he gave to a bellows (??), after which he placed
his stove on the top of a stool. Then, just as this mystery began to bother me,
this fine fellow finished with this process. He took out of his rags a plate of
round iron, which he inserted into a circle of the same material, and into it
he poured what he had fried. A short time later he put some water on top of it
with a needle, and that was to cool off a material hard enough to be drawn from
the apparatus and placed into another machine. Here my eyes failed to
penetrate, only my ears succeeded in the task of spying, discovering that, as
he turned a crank, he made certain wheels emit a dull sound, and the wheels
made another sound from time to time, like cutting something hard with great
force. At this point my curiosity was awoken truly; I began to groan and to
stretch, like someone who wishes to turn from on side to the other, and I did
that to stand up and see better, through the opening of the two curtains, what
this work was. At the sound I made turning in my bed, this honest artisan
stopped his work, and did not start it again until he heard me snoring loudly.
I had been brought up too long at court not to understand what he was
conniving, and I was correct in seeing that in this apparatus he had made gold
that he had tightly tied in a paper; and then, after having put all of his rags
back in his sack, he went to sleep without making a sound. It gave me great
pleasure to have had this encounter, and I imagined that it was a remedy sent
from Heaven to sweeten my bad luck. I had read many odd books, including those
filled with confused puzzles, which were thought of as sacred guides to find
the philosophers’ stone. I knew all the stories of Jacques Coeur, Raymond
Lully, Arnold of Villenova, Nicolas Flamel and others, right down to Bragardin.
Therefore I believed that this fellow was a miniature copy of them, and that he
alone, more than any prince or king, was capable of improving my comfort in the
world. I thought only of how to accost him and become friendly with him; I
spent the whole night going over it in my mind, provoked as much by the desire
to become close to him as by the fear that he would be frightened by my
approach, or that he would slip out of my hands without filling them.
Chapter XVIII
How the disgraced page made the acquaintance of a
man who had the philosopher’s stone.
The day had only just
begun to break when, summoned by the cock, or perhaps some secret fear, this
man whom I had already begun to idolize, got up out of bed, dressed himself,
put his sack on his shoulders, and then went down to settle his account with
the hostess; at the same time, I carried all my clothing to the window, which I
opened, so that, while I put them on, I might easily see when he came out, and
which road he would take. All went well
for me up to that point; this new Artefius was heading where I had chosen to
go, and I had nothing left to do but settle my account with my hostess and keep
him in sight. When I saw him on the highway, I was afraid of frightening him by
approaching him so quickly, and I thought it would be better to wait until I
saw him stop at an inn, so that I could have a drink with him and take up the
subject of traveling in his company. The burden that he was carrying on his
shoulders made the opportunity come along very soon; I saw him stop in the
first village, where he asked for a pint of wine, and sat down on a rock at the
door of the inn; I went in when he was almost finished with his pint and asked
for a quarter of a pint, which I needed only as a pretext to speak to him.
While we were drinking I asked him if he was going to the port, but he replied
to everything I said to him only with monosyllables, and with such a fierce
expression on his face that I was almost in despair. I thought that he had
recognized me as the boy who had seemed to him so suspicious in his room, and I
had thought of many arguments by means of which to get him to speak about a
mystery about which he wanted to remain silent. But just as I had him in sight he disappeared almost in an
instant.
Having lost sight of him
so soon, my heart froze with fear that he had made use of some magic trick to
disappear into thin air. I ran, driven by this fear, to the place where I had
lost sight of him, and, seeing that at this place there was a hollow into which
the road sunk and curved, I recovered my breath and courage, and reprimanded
myself for having too little strength of mind. But when I had descended the
entire length of the field and did not see my man at all, I felt a disgust that
I cannot describe to you. I threw my hat on the ground, tore my hair, and
shouted so angrily that anyone who had seen me in this condition would have
taken me for a madman. My man, who had only left the road to answer a call of
nature, undoubtedly heard some of my shouts, and, anticipating that I might
attack him, tried to hide from me. He had already returned to the hollow road I
had come down, carefully taking side roads out of fear that I might find him,
when he stopped at the top to watch me and see if I would pass by. By chance it
happened that I, thinking that I had lost him, turned my head suddenly towards
the place where I had left him and I saw my man with his burden. Seeing him,
the sad feelings with which I was filled were replaced by happiness and hope,
and bravery then joined company with them. I no longer wanted to delay my plan,
and as soon as I reached this man who was fleeing from me I audaciously
declared what I was and what I recognized he was. But I made this overture in
such an appealing manner, and I exaggerated the difficulties in which I found
myself and the happiness that he possessed so much, that if he had not been
weak, he would not have been as troubled as he was.
At first, he threw his
sack on the ground, as though he wanted more freedom to make use of his sword,
which was attached to a strap, and I, who was holding his sword in his hand,
stood with it ready, waiting to see what he would do; he might have tried some
desperate blow if he had not found me so determined. But he was not a robust
man, somewhat broken by old age and labor, who was frightened by my youthful
daring; he was content to accept the misfortune of this meeting, and to moan
tearfully. When I saw that I only needed to reassure his mind and to sympathize
with his suffering, I was overcome with joy. It seemed to me that I had never
spoken with such ease; on the spot I offered convincing consolation, as
elegantly as if I had been Demosthenes or some new Isocrates. I made it
perfectly clear to this worried soul that what he thought was a disgraceful
adventure was a pure, fortuitous gift. I described myself to him as an
honorable gentleman, with a heart so good that not all the tortures in the
world would ever compel me to reveal his secret, if he would reveal it to me,
and that I would follow him everywhere and serve him all my life with
unparalleled devotion; that he could not meet anyone more useful to him than a
person like me, who was at the same time intelligent, faithful, and brave; that
I would put myself to the proof by performing the most unappealing and most
difficult services for him, if he only allowed me. In response to these
statements he remained mute for a very long time, his face clouded, more like
that of a coppersmith than that of a philosopher; but, when he had regained his
composure, and mused for a while about what he had to say, he gave a reply that
was very submissive, but very clever; he told me under what masters he had
studied, and what pains he had taken to acquire this golden fleece that I so
much desired. After this straightforward confession, which put me already in
possession of so many imagined benefits, he claimed to be frightened of the
danger incurred by those who had such a secret when they were discovered by
some prince; that the least misfortune they might expect was to lose their
freedom entirely, but normally making them labor and languish in prison was not
enough, but they often lost their lives by being tortured cruelly to reveal
their secret; that this precious gift was not produced solely by human effort,
that there was a special ritual necessary to accomplish this great work, and
that the failure to use this gift very carefully would earn an eternal
malediction; that it was necessary to give help secretly to the poor with it,
and to guard against making it known to great ones, who are naturally
ambitious, and who would only want the power to wage war everywhere, and to
conquer their neighboring states; that it would be an unforgivable crime to put
this sort of weapon in the hands of violent men; and that it was for these
reasons that he led a hidden, difficult life, understanding that divine Justice
would hurl him into eternal abysses if, after having received such a rare gift,
he abused it; that he had recognized by my words that I was not low-born, nor
badly brought up, but it was necessary that I show proofs that I did not wish
to be ungrateful towards the all powerful hand that had heaped favors upon me,
and which would still grant me the chance of knowing him; that if I wanted to
join him, as I said, he would bring me with him throughout the earth, most of
whose languages and customs he said that he knew; that we would begin these
wonderful trips with one to the Holy land, so that, having worshipped the
Sepulcher where he who had made the world was buried, we would have a special
blessing to pass through it without danger; that he wanted only two things from
me, after which he would consider me part of his own soul and would hide
nothing from me.
I found myself in such
joyful suspense at what he said that I was almost unable to ask him what the
two things were that he wanted me to do to earn such happiness. He finally let
me know that the matter consisted of two points, of which one was very
appealing to me, and was not at all difficult. But the other was so cruel that
it was like being stabbed in the chest. First he wanted me to make a general
confession in the city to which we were going, at the hands of a good priest
whom he named; then he asked that I trust his word, and when I went through
England I wait for him in London at the home of a merchant who was one of his
friends. I promised him that I would make an earnest confession, but as for the
separation, I protested to him that I would never be able to do it. He insisted
steadily on this point, with grave oaths that he wished to give me as pledges.
During this conversation, we were moving along together towards the seaport,
where I believed we were going alone, and which was no more than half a league
from us; there, by his order, we went to eat and sleep in a convent, where we
were received with joy.
Chapter XIX
How the disgraced page tasted what the philosopher
called universal medicine, and how they were separated.
I remember having read in the fable that hope was shut up in Pandora’s
box, and that when she came out together with all the evils of the world no one
could tell whether she was evil or good, or both simultaneously; and I find
something very admirable in this uncertain (ambiguous?) description.
When we retired that night, the great philosopher and I, he urged me by
all that was holy to live piously, and he made me fine promises to provide me
with the means to make a fine appearance to the world. Among these things that
he said to me with great zeal, he could not resist tell me that he had
prophetic visions in his sleep that he had prophetic visions in his sleep, and
that a great many important events were announced to him in this way. He swore
to me that he had my image in his mind two days before seeing me, and that I
had appeared to him in a dream before we came to the inn where we found
ourselves together, and that he clearly recognized in the shape and features of
my face that I had not been born to cause him any displeasure, but that he had
tried to avoid meeting me and getting to know me because, in the dream in which
I had appeared, he had had another terrifying vision. I offered in candid reply
to these remarks everything that came to my mouth to reassure his mind, and to
represent to him vividly the affection I had already conceived for him; I did
not make all of these protestations without tears, and the tears were so
efficacious that they provoked his own tears. After this tender discussion in
which the devotion between our two hearts was affirmed, he told me that it was
late and that I needed rest. I went to throw myself on my bed, but he only
threw himself on his knees at the foot of his own bed, and I believe that he
did not stand up until the break of day. In the morning we took a walk together
in a garden of the house, and we spoke about things that were relevant to
putting me in a position for him to declare several very weighty secrets, and
the entire day was used for this preparation. The next day, this great
philosopher, who had awoken before I did, came to tell me that I should dress
quickly, and that he was going to show me the highest miracles of his art, and
the incomparable means of preserving nature weakened by age, altered by some
decay, or wounded by some violence. It was a beautiful day, and I could not
have spent my time looking with pleasure at the most beautiful colors of the
world.
This learned alchemist held between his hands a stoneware pot,
apparently filled with some kind of ordinary ointment, but whose purpose was
only to cover other very rare commodities. After he had taken a spatula and
with it gently removed a piece of parchment covered with the nasty drug, he
took from under it three small glass bottles, which were no bigger than a
finger tip, and which were only half full. He wiped them one after another with
a white cloth, so that I might more clearly see the wonderful beauties
contained within the glass.
The first bottle he showed me was pearl-colored, but it had such a
lovely luster that I had never seen anything more pleasing; the brightness of
the refined quicksilver was not at all as beautiful, and it was a kind of
smooth powder. I asked him what its composition was. He replied:
“It is quite useless, but among the inhabitants of the earth who love
only vanity this powder costs as much as the far more substantial riches, and
can function where gold and diamonds would have no strength. It is what is
called talcum oil, and it is what women who aspire to beauty desire with great
ardor.”
And while he was saying that, he showed me the second bottle, which
contained a powder whose fiery color was so lively and brilliant that I could
have spent two hours contemplating it without becoming bored; and according to
what I was told by this philosopher,
who hardly made more of it than of the talcum oil, this was the projective
powder so sought for by alchemists. But when he showed me the third vial, he
was laughing, but without any of the scorn with which he had shown for the two
others. This one was nearly filled with a precious ointment, somewhat purple,
and was what the philosophers call the universal medicine. He made me pour
three fingers of wine into a glass, which
was left over from the evening; then, having drawn a small amount of this drug
with a golden needle, he had me put it into the glass and insisted that I drink
some, assuring me that I would like it very much, and that I would even find in
it pleasures that I had never experienced. I smelled a very sweet vapor as I
stirred the needle in the wine; and that gave me the desire to taste it. But
when I put the glass to my mouth it was another miracle: it seemed that all my
other senses were overwhelmed by a pleasant rapture, and that all my senses had
retreated from all the parts of my body, lodging themselves entirely in my
tongue and in my palate. I had only taken one swallow, and as I was handing the
glass to my philosopher, who was supposed to drink all the rest, my
overwhelming pleasure made me open my hand, and the precious drink fell to the
ground. The good man, who liked to
strengthen his elixir and his precious balms, was frightened by the accident,
and thought that it might be an evil omen: he asked me if I had felt any
nervous spasms while drinking, and since I told him that I had not, and that I
had let the glass fall only because I was overjoyed, he rebuked me for giving
in too easily to my sensual impulses, and he told me that I should remember
that our mind was created to be the mistress of our senses and not their
servant. At the same time he took both my hands and, turning them around, fixed
his eyes steadily on one of them. Then, when he had examined for some time a
certain line that extended in a semicircle from the first finger to the last,
he said to me, shaking his head: “Here are signs of an inclination to
pleasure, which will make you suffer very much.”
I wanted to ask him
more on this subject, but he suddenly shut my mouth, while telling me that
these were auguries of an illness that I would be able to avoid if I were wise,
and that he would discuss this with me in more detail at another time.
Chapter XX
The separation of the disgraced page and the
philosopher, and by what means the page crossed the sea.
As we were speaking, a monk came to tell us that there was a man at the
door asking for one of us. I grew pale at these words, imagining that this
would be someone who had been sent after me to stop me; in an instant the image
of the man to whom I had given two blows of the sword came into my mind and,
although this action had only been straightforward and honorable, my conscience
was not entirely free of fear; but, when the clothing and face of the man who
was asking for us was described, the philosopher turned pale in his turn, and
came over to me to say into my ear:
“It’s me he is asking for, I see very well that, in spite of myself, I
must leave you, but it will be for only a very short time, and I shall use the
rest of the trip to speak to you about the things you will have to do in my
absence.”
I wanted to continue this discussion and to show him how much this
separation troubled me, but he did not give me the chance, rushing off
immediately to find the man who was waiting for him. I followed him, to see
from a distance who this person might be. He was a very thin, very pale man,
who was close to the age of the great chemist whom I considered second only to
God as the author and cause of all my future joys. They were together for at
least an hour and, judging by their gestures, they were arguing about something
of great importance. Finally they bid each other farewell, and the philosopher,
having led the stranger to the door, came to take me by the hand to tell me
that it was done, and that we must part for three weeks, that he had made every
effort to withdraw from his agreement, but he could not find a way. This
decision was very painful for me, and I was unable to decide to cross the sea
with this man, whom I had already made part of myself.
Finally, after making me swear terrifying oaths that I would join him in
London in three weeks time at the latest, and after urging me to wait in that
place at the home of a merchant who was one of his friends, to whom he wrote a
letter, I agreed to his demands. He asked me if I had any money, and since I
had told him that I had only eight or ten pistoles, he took fifteen out of his
pocket, begging me to take more, so that I might have a woolen garment made
while waiting for him. He gave me more than thirteen or fourteen grains of a
fine, lemon-colored powder, and told me that if I became very sick at sea I
should swallow just a bit of it in a teaspoonful of whiskey, and that it was a
cordial and firm friend of nature; above all that it was the glorious enemy of
all the most deadly poisons, and that neither the heart nor the brain could
suffer in any way in its presence. I stored these gifts very carefully and
accompanied him to the edge of town and, when we parted, we embraced warmly,
with a great effusion of tears by both of us.
When I returned to the village, I was no longer what I was before, and I
had much trouble getting my bearings in the charitable house where we had slept
for two nights. The next day I took my leave with many expressions of my
gratitude, to embark with some other passengers on a boat that was setting sail
for England; I became apprehensive when I learned that a band of fiddlers
qui était depuis peu partie de
mon ordinaire séjour
was also making this trip. I stayed in steerage the whole time, fearing
that, if I went for a walk on the deck, I would find someone who knew me who
might become of aware of my plans.
Chapter XXI
How the disgraced page, after a storm, made use of
a powder that the philosopher had given him, and what effect it produced.
We had twenty-four hours of bad weather since
departing, after a touch of wind came upon us without warning but failed to
harm us; and everyone became so sick that several of those on the deck looked
just about dead. As for me, I was underneath a crew’s station, lying there
stretched out, from time to time opening my mouth without being able to vomit,
and I believe that I never would have gotten up had a compassionate sailor not
come across my body and, pulling me to my feet, put some whiskey to my lips.
After this remedy had helped me to recover, I gave him a piece of silver in
exchange for a double dose. I soon put two or three grains of the precious
powder in this whiskey and no sooner had swallowed it than I found myself
completely cured; it did not smell as sweet as what I had tasted in the
monastery, but it made the heart and the nose feel good; and even the taste of
it that remained in the sailor’s cup made everyone wanted to drink it. Rumor
spread through the ship that it was I who had put something in it; everyone
came to inspect me closely; among others, there was a certain musician whom I
had seen playing in all of the princes’ ballets; when he recognized me he came
and embraced me with a great shout:
“Ah, sir,” he said to me,
“who made you come to this place, and why have you left your master?”
He continued to ask me a
thousand importunate questions, to all of which I replied coldly, at which
point one of his friends abruptly said to him:
“What’s this, then you
know this young boy? Hah! I beg you to tell me a bit about what he put in the
sailor’s cup to revive your master, the gentleman who was dying up there on the
deck: he will be greatly obliged to you for this favor, and you know that he is
a man who is not ungrateful to those who give him pleasure.”
At the insistence of the
musician, I had to make use again of my little paper, and the crowd of those
who wanted to see it was so great that I almost suffocated. My remedy worked
well enough to satisfy the gentleman in charge who, to show me his gratitude,
came down to where I was with a jar of candied nuts in his hand, from which he
made me swallow three or four, even though I thanked him for it with very great
persistence.
Then we became great
friends, and I received signs of affection from him that I would not have dared
to hope for from a close relative.
When we disembarked, I
joined the company of this fine man, to reach that great city which bears the
name of his figure (?) It was a steward of a prince’s mansion who had been sent
to this section to present some letters complimenting his Britannic Majesty,
and to bring some English mares and some hunting dogs into France.
Had I not had my letter of introduction and the place to meet, I would
have chosen no other home but his; but I had other enterprises in me, which
were more important to me, and I would not be deterred from my plan for the
best luck in the world.
Chapter XXII
The arrival of the disgraced page at London, and
the bad luck that he had at the home of a merchant.
As soon as I found the
lodgings of the merchant of whom my philosopher had spoken, and he had opened
the letter that I carried on my behalf, he embraced me warmly and ordered that
I be treated as though I were one of the children of the house. This man was
very rich, and he did business with many distant provinces. He had at least two
or three well-equipped vessels. The only trouble I had in his house was that he
was the only one in it who understood my language, so that when he went out on
some business I did not know how to ask for the things that I needed. I went to
complain about this inconvenience at an inn where the steward who had taken a
liking to me was living; in it there was a fine man who, out of sympathy for my
discomfort, furnished me with a small pamphlet printed in London, which taught
me how to ask for everything I would need. Almost instantly I knew it by heart,
and even with the correct pronunciation, with the help of some of the servants
in the house, who took pleasure in teaching me. But this new acquaintance, who
was supposed to help me, was extremely inconvenient. This merchant had in his
house, to assist him in his business, one of his close relatives, who had a
very beautiful wife; as least her complexion was a mixture of vermilion and
white, and she had a full figure, and was no more than twenty-two or
twenty-three years old. This woman, whose husband was not very attractive,
looked at me provocatively, with something amorous in mind; I perceived that
she was wide-eyed as she watched me, and darted secret glances at me, and that
she took great pleasure in hearing me pronounce the word that I knew in her
language.
One evening when there
were a few people in the house busy bringing crates of goods downstairs into a
kind of cave, she came to find me in my room, and, as though I had been capable
of understanding it, she spoke to me with great emotion for at least a quarter
of an hour. I did not know how to reply to all that, but she pretended to
believe that I was joking, and she continued talking once again. Finally, when
she had exhausted my patience, I wanted to speak to hear with signs, but she
suddenly retired, and gave me only a good bye. This woman came back to my room
several times to continue her lovely discourse, of which I understood nothing,
and she did not want to be interrupted while she was speaking, out of the fear
she had that I would lose track. After she had assailed me with these sweet
conversations in which I as unable to understand a thing, an occasion presented
itself which ended our comedy. One evening her husband returned from town after
having had a very good time, excessive drinking in this country not being
considered a vice.
The constant hiccupping
rendered his speech unintelligible. Since it is the custom of those who have
drunk too much to want to drink more, this man had no sooner entered his
apartment than he had wine brought in, and he made me come along as company
while he ate. Bacchus had done his job, and the only power the man had left was
that of speech, and there was not much left of that. I came in and witnessed
this disagreeable spectacle. I learned that nothing can illustrate the horror
of vice better than the picture of vice itself, and that the Greeks were very
sensible when they inebriated their slaves in front of their children to teach
them temperance. This deputy performed many indecent acts at the table,
demonstrating by his words and actions that he no longer had any of the
advantages that we have over the other animals. However, his wife merely smiled
and, making herself no wiser by this example, took the same road and arrived at
the same point. Several times she emptied a large gilded red cup, made in the
shape of a boat, and I had some doubt that her reason bear shipwreck by this
path. Finally, her husband fell from the table, and it was all we could do, his
wife, two of his servants and I, to carry him to his bed.
I had returned to my room
after performing this service for him, when his wife came to pull me by the
arm, without giving me the leisure to put my doublet back on, leading me with a
torch back to a place next to her bed. I followed her because she forced me to,
and I did not know what she wanted of me, when she sat down on the edge of the
bed and, drawing from underneath it a large vessel full of wine, she invited me
to fill the boat, which was on the floor next to her. I made many gestures
indicating that I did not wish to drink, but she paid no attention, filling the
cup, showing me that she was going to drink to my health, and she did not leave
a drop. Then she prepared for me the same vessel so that I might use it in a
similar manner; her hand trembled so much that, in handing it to me, she
spilled part of what she wanted me to drink; but I had so little love for this
liquor that I could not manage to drink the rest. And while I was in this
difficulty, with the cup at my mouth about to drink the medicine against my
will, I found a fine opportunity to avoid it: the English woman turned her head
towards her husband, to see if he was in a deep sleep. I seized the opportunity
to pour the wine on my shirt, preferring to stain my shirt rather than damage
my stomach. My Bacchante did not notice my ruse and, as though transported by
some kind of madness, she placed both hands in her hair and, pushing her face
against my head, hiccupped in my nose, which was certainly not a pleasant
experience. I forcibly tried to pry myself loose from her, but she held on so
tightly that I could not do it, and in addition the illness that overcame her
brought disgrace upon my head; all the wine that she had drunk suddenly poured
out of her mouth, and I can do nothing more than lower my head a bit to save my
face from this deluge. My hair was soaked from this storm, and the horror that
this accident generated in me compelled me to make such a great effort to save
myself from the hands of this madwoman that she was forced to let go. The
memory of this disgusting event made me very cautious the next day to avoid any
chance of meeting alone with this lovely impudent woman; but she herself,
having had second thoughts, when she had rid herself of the wine, soon advised me to leave the house
quickly.
Chapter XXII
How the disgraced page left the lodgings of the
merchant, and how he was treated by a steward of his friends.
I had passed in front of
this English woman two or three times without even daring to look at her, I was
so embarrassed by her boldness, and I had resolved not to dally for more than a
moment in places where I would be likely to see her, when she sought me out and
followed me, as I was going to the home of a French officer, and, coming up to
me and pulling on my coat, she compelled me to enter the shop of a Norman
book-seller, whose wife was one of her friends, and knew how to speak English
very well. This confidant served as a go-between to warn me that she and her
husband had had a fight about me, and that this brute, whose eyes had been
opened by the light that we had brought to the place next to her bed, had
remembered very vividly after he had awoken that he had seen us together while
he was drunk, that she had done everything in her power to remove this image
from his mind, attempting to convince him that this event was merely a dream,
but it was impossible to make him change his opinion; moreover, his jealousy
had reached the point that he had considered assassinating me with a knife. The
Norman bookseller added on his own that I should be careful, that Englishmen
like this one were very quarrelsome and vindictive, and that the best that I
could do would be to avoid ever setting foot in the house. This news in no way
pleased me, and the advice that he gave me seemed somewhat unappealing. It had
only been fifteen days since I had left the philosopher who had filled my mind with
such sweet hopes, and I was afraid that if I moved no matter how small a
distance from the place where we were supposed to meet, when he came there
looking for me in accordance with our promises no one would give him any news
of me. On the other hand, I had reason to believe that if the mad jealousy of
the steward tainted me with scandal the philosopher might lose his desire to
take me with him. Having
considered both possibilities carefully, I chose the safest, which was to send
my compliments to the merchant who owned the house, and to tell him that some
of my friends had arrived in the town, compelling me to spend three or four
days with them, and I begged him to do me the favor, in case our friend arrived
during this time, to let me know by mail. This expedient seemed likely to
succeed, the merchant promised to be sure to notify me, and he showed no sign
to the person who delivered the message that he had learned anything about the
disorderly behavior that had taken place.
I was restless, and dreamed only of reading books
about geography and various voyages, to find out in them about the climates,
and the nature and customs of the people I proposed to visit with my learned
guide, whenever he returned as he had promised. Sometimes, when I grew weary of
reading, I went for a walk beyond the city with this noble maitre d’hotel, who
had shown me so much gratitude for what
little I did for him, and who showed his growing affection for me every day. We
never let a day of decent weather go by without going out to converse on the
lovely lawn, which had never been touched by a plow, and which had been
treasured since time immemorial, for the pleasure of the citizens of this large
city. There I often used to tell him the stories I had read, or some entertaining
anecdotes, in which he took very great pleasure, and this generous,
good-natured friend secretly proposed to show his good will by looking for an
advantageous position for me among the noblemen of the country. One day when I
was busy with my books he came, transported with joy, to find me, and he said,
embracing me tightly, that I should prepare myself to follow him and that he
had made my fortune, for which I was not at all happy. I pretended to be very
obliged to him, and to have received great pleasure from this good news. But
the hope that I had to travel with my philosopher and to learn his fine secrets
had made all other pleasures insipid to me. Nevertheless I put on the clothing
that I made myself wear in England and prepared to see the masters to whom this
friend had, without knowing my feelings, given me.
Chapter XXIV
How the disgraced page became the slave of a great
lady
This generous steward
brought me to the home of a great lord, where I saw nothing but splendor;
everyone was dressed in velvet, and lackeys who all wore numbers on their
stomachs on a plaque of gilded vermilion were all strikingly handsome; but I
was unimpressed by this fine display, believing myself to be in a better
position than the wealthiest lords. My guide, who was accompanied by one of his
friends who lived in England, brought me to visit a lady, and he praised me so
much that I turned red; he spoke hyperbolically of the nobility of my mind,
and, assuring her of my reliability, offered himself as assurance for me. All
of that hardly pleased me; I continued to put a good face on things, I had no
intention of committing myself beyond the day that the philosopher would carry
out his word. However, they told me what kind of position I would have in this
house, that it would be very honorable and would not be difficult for me: it
was to serve as the instructor for a young woman, the daughter of the woman I
had greeted, and to make her capable of understanding and speaking my
language. I was only beginning to
excuse myself modestly from the responsibility of this worthy task, and to
insist upon my lack of competence, when I saw that my would-be pupil was
arriving. She was a girl thirteen or
fourteen years old, but tall for her age, with chestnut hair, a very delicate
and beautiful complexion, very wide,
beautiful eyes, but above all her mouth was beautiful, without exaggeration,
her lips were of a red more beautiful than that of coral.
Her arrival disturbed me very much, and if someone
had put his hand on my rib cage he would have recognized by the palpitations of
my heart how much this object had moved me. I went to kiss her dress with this
strange confusion; and when she assured me that she was very pleased to have a
tutor as worthy as I, and that she had been waiting impatiently for two days to
see me, I found myself entirely taken aback; my mind was so busy receiving
delicious objects sent by my eyes and by my ears that it no longer had need of
my tongue. It seems to me that I replied only by stuttering, and with expressions
of bashful timidity. Immediately after this initial exchange, my lovely pupil
turned towards her mother, who was watching us, to tell her something about my
manner or about the way she wanted me to be treated in the house; then, after
making a curtsy to her to retreat to her apartment, she ordered me to follow
her. I went with her and two of her ladies into a magnificent room; its
paneling was done exquisitely, and within its brilliant gold and blue, small,
appealing, well made paintings glowed. On a kind of shelf which circled this
room one saw all the rarest and most precious delicate objects that could be
drawn from the bosom of the sea; on one side you might see large shells of
mother of pearl; on another side were admirably made clay vases, together with
transparent porcelains, some small figures of gold or gilded silver, set on
ebony pedestals, which were the masterpieces of some celebrated sculptors.
There were also in this lovely retreat two large mirrors where one could see
everything; and near the five or six velvet cushions piled one on top of the
other, upon which this lovely woman was sitting. There was a long silver plank
suspended on silver and silk ropes, upon which I saw many fine books arranged.
When my new mistress had
made herself comfortable on her pillows, she began asking me questions about my
birth, my upbringing, and my fortune; I replied in a way that conformed to my
intention to conceal everything cleverly. I told her that my name was Ariston,
that I was the son of a very noble merchant whom I had last sometime ago; and
that, having no more than my mother, who no longer wished to have anything to
do with commerce, I had begged her to grant me permission to see the world,
since I was useless to her at home; that I had intended to visit the Low
Countries and Holland, but having found myself in the company of someone who
was on his way to England, he made me wish to follow him; finally, that I was
so fortunate to meet such a worthy mistress as she that I suddenly lost the will
to travel through the world, to limit my ambition to such a glorious servitude.
The lovely Englishwoman showed that she was pleased with what I said, and,
speaking to the women who were near her, asked them their advice, but in a way
that was so strongly in my favor that they were unable to say anything that was
not in my favor. However, a page opened the door and, when he was asked in
English what he wanted, and he had replied, my lovely pupil said to me,
touching my arm with her hand:
“Go, it’s you they want.”
Chapter XXV
How the disgraced page and the steward parted.
When I went down to the
bottom of the staircase with the page, I found that the one who was asking for
me was that helpful steward to whom I was so indebted, who wanted to give me
some lessons on how to conduct myself in the decent position in which I found
myself, and also to say his goodbyes. He assured me that two days ago he had
finished all of his tasks, and that he had deferred his departure only to see
me established securely in this house before he left. We went to take a drink
in his lodgings, and from there I accompanied him to a six-oared boat (paravos,
not in any dictionary) which would take him directly to Gravesend. Before
embarking, he renewed the protestations he had made along the route to serve me
in any way I wanted to make use of him, and he compelled me to accept as a
keepsake a small setting of diamonds that he had on his finger, accepting in
exchange a small gold ring that I had on my finger; and the graciousness he
showed while doing all of these things enhanced their value. I did not part
from him without shedding some tears, and I did not leave the banks of the
Thames until I had lost sight of him. From there I returned very sadly to the
home of my lovely pupil, admiring the generosity of this new friend who, in a
servant’s position, showed such a free and noble heart.
Chapter XXVI
The first loves of the disgraced page.
Since all new things are
pleasing at first, I hardly had time the whole daylong to think about my
adventures. I had to keep myself always ready to respond to the demands that
were continually made upon me, either by the daughter, by the mother, or by the
ladies of the household; but for all that I did not forget the man for whom I
was waiting with such impatience, who would divulge secrets that would make me
so healthy, wealthy, and satisfied. Early in the morning, as soon as the door
of the house was opened, I went to the French post office to find out if the
merchant who had given me lodging when I arrived had not sent news of the
extraordinary man who was to come looking for me at his house. I learned
nothing at all and could do nothing more than give money to a servant of the
house, who was an intelligent and clever fellow, so that he would go day after
day to the merchant’s house to ask if a stranger who looked like the man for
whom was waiting had arrived. However, I began to carry out the task I had been
assigned, and I had not been performing it two or three days before my pupil
found something pleasing in my way of teaching.
At the beginning I did no
more than correct her pronunciation, or explain to her some sentences that she
found difficult. But when she had grown somewhat accustomed to my face, and had
shown me that she took pleasure in listening to me, I found certain ways to
tell little stories, then to recite narratives from romances. And all of that
permitted me to make some progress in my plan to get into her good graces. She
knew some things that had happened to lovers of this island, and for me these
were entirely new stories. But she knew very little about fable, and almost
nothing of those heroic romances then in fashion; she had never reflected upon
that productive work that was balanced with the gold and pearls of a miter
(third-century bishop Heliodorus); she had never learned anything about those
ingenious narratives by means of which the excellent Ariosto had prevented his
name from growing old; she still knew nothing of those glorious works by means
of which the sublime pen of Tasso made his immortal reputation, bringing the
great Geoffrey to the Holy Land. And when I showed her that I could teach her
something about these pleasant matters, she believed that she had discovered in
me a very precious mine; she deceived herself into believing that she would
soon be able to become knowledgeable without having to make considerable
effort, thinking that she would only have to listen attentively to my
recitation. For this purpose she proposed to neglect no opportunity to compel
me gently to perform the task; she put in many good words for me with her
mother, and even though the woman was very old and of a very serious
disposition, this clever girl often made her listen to silly stories. She made
me many little presents, like pictures on marble with borders ornamented with
lapis and gilded silver; she also gave me some silver, like reading
candlesticks and small silver tables to place at the side of my bed.
One day, after having
glimpsed the diamond I was wearing, she gave a secret order to one of her girls
to ask to look at my ring, to calculate the size of my finger, so that she might give me another,
more expensive one. I was astonished at the shrewdness she used to make this
gift to me, and at the means she found to make it seem that her calculated
generosity was accidental. This beautiful girl, drawing her glove, let the ring
fall to the ground, at a moment when I was the only one near her; and, when I
had picked it up and tried to give it to her, she said that this ring could not
be in better hands, and that she wanted me to keep it out of love for her. All
these favors that came to me from an excellent beauty were the matches that
produced in my mind a wonderful blaze; and I already found such attractions in
this pleasing pupil that I would have had difficulty leaving her even if I had
seen the philosopher who promised me such fine things. As a result of thinking
about this lovely girl I had painted her image in my mind, and this pleasing
portrait continually wandered through my thoughts; it seemed to me that I was
always seeing her, even when I lost sight of her at certain times of the day,
and all the time that I lay in bed; and this poison, that I had innocently drunk with my eyes, did not take long to
show its malicious effect in my heart. I saw that this illness had secretly won
my heart, and that I loved this person more tenderly than was good for the
tranquility of my mind. She was not only present at all my waking hours, but I
still saw her in my dreams, so clearly that I no longer had a peaceful moment.
Chapter XXVII
What was the first proof of affection that the
disgraced page received from his mistress.
My beautiful pupil
clearly perceived my feeling for her, and she was not angry to see my madness,
judging that it would be useful, and this secret passion would compel me to be
more solicitous in conversation and teaching. Then too, respectful and secret
love can be disagreeable only to women who are prejudiced by some strong
dislike.
For me, who saw that she
held me in high esteem, and who had not lost courage because he had bad luck, I
intended unashamedly to show her my passion by performing all kinds of
services, waiting for the opportunity to tell her the truth about my birth. On a
day that a beautiful girl, one of her cousins, came to visit her, together with
her mother, she wanted to amuse her and, since their mothers were speaking
about very important affairs, my pupil had a collation prepared for her cousin
and, having brought her into her room, ordered me to come to them to tell some
lovely story. To obey her command and to avoid material that might not please
them, I began to tell the story of Psyche, and I found that I was in a good
mood to spout these trifles. Among other things, I gave them a description of
the beauties of love, which they find wonderful, because I adopted a poetic
style. I was not content merely to represent the entire body of Cupid as an
alabaster statue lying on a bed, and to make his hair a pleasant mingling of
golden threads. I also wanted to make them see his eyes and eyelids; and I had
the effrontery to say that they were two brilliant sapphires, hidden by two
rose leaves. I described the exquisite shape and proportion of his mouth, and
told them that the bright coral of his lips covered two rows of pearls whiter
and more precious that all that the sea produces.
After that I represented
the indiscretion of Psyche in the transports of her joy, and how love damaged
Love when, in blind haste she spilled a drop of burning oil on his wing.
After that I came to the
terrible awakening of Cupid, and I made up reproaches for him to deliver, of
which the ladies approved, even though they sided with Psyche.
But when I fabricated the
complaints of that unfortunate loving woman, who had only disobeyed this little
guide because she was surprised and in the dark, and who had burned only with
an innocent ardor, the girls who were listening to me began to weep. My
mistress placed a feathered fan in front of her eyes, to hide their dampness;
but her cousin, less scrupulous, did not hesitate to place her kerchief over
her breasts and to confess innocently that these tender expressions made her
feel pain. Immediately after this effect produced by my young and mad eloquence,
and when these girls, recovering from their emotion, were getting ready to hear
the rest of my story, the old relative of the house came to pay her compliments
before leaving, and her daughter was informed. Therefore I didn’t finish my
story at that time; but it was a task that was taken up the first day that the
cousins would meet again.
After they had departed,
my mistress’ relative paid me some very special compliments, and I could read
in her eyes that if I had not been otherwise engaged I would not have been
without a mistress. I replied to everything she said with as much modesty as
gratitude. However, my pupil, who was present at this rite, mistook what was an
extremely innocent politeness. After her cousin left, she returned to her room
and commanded me to follow her, pretending that she wanted to know the rest of
the story of Psyche; but when I approached her she said nothing about this
matter, or if she said something, it was like a simply addition and not the
prime subject of what she was saying. She remained silent for a quarter of an
hour, looking at me from time to time, with eyes raging with anger, and when
she opened her mouth it was to deliver a haughty reproach for the praises I had
received from another mouth, as though I had strenuously begged for them, me
who had never not expected them at all.
This haughty soul proudly
asked me if I had not been charmed by the beauty of her relative, and if this
was not someone who could seduce me from her service. Then she added to these
remarks that she did not want to keep me with her tyrannically, if I intended
to leave her, and that I must act freely in this matter.
In response to what she
said, my heart stopped, and I turned pale, so that my mistress could easily see
my pain, and she even had occasion to repent having caused it. When I had
recovered a bit, I replied that her suspicions were absurd, and that there was
nothing whatsoever to cause her to think these thoughts; that I was no longer
free from the moment that she had honored me with her first commands, and that,
if the misfortune of being dismissed from her service ever happened to me, I
would never be so cowardly as to serve another mistress; that she alone had the
worthiness that was capable of
captivating me, and that her charms and goodness, together with her rare beauty, were chains that could not be
dissolved. Our conversation lasted two hours, and was so pleasant for me that
it seemed to last only a moment; I found that it had the shape of those plays
where peace follows the storm, and whose beginning is filled with trouble and
distress, but which always end happily. I had played the part of someone
wrongfully accused, and she the part of a prejudiced judge and vengeful party;
but after having entered a lengthy plea, we found ourselves once again in
agreement.
Chapter XXVIII
How the disgraced page became friendly with his
mistress’ favorite
No one disturbed our
conversation, but there was a woman of the house who wanted to take advantage
of it; she was a free spirit who soon discovered our secrets, but who never did
anything to harm me. This clever person, who was my mistress’ favorite, and who
had seen us speaking together for such a long time, came up to me on the
stairway as I was leaving the room, and, after looking at me very closely on a
large landing, where the light was still good, she laughed and said to me: “Are
you sick, so that you seem to me so changed? Your eyes are wet and red, one
would say that you had been crying, and I even see on your cheeks some traces
of tears which were not there before.”
I was completely
surprised by these words and, in my confusion, I looked for ways to hide the
truth by making up some reason for what she saw in my face; but this girl
assured me that she knew the truth very well, and she said that she would give
me advice on how to live in such a way that it would not be known by anyone
else, because that would be dangerous; that I had nothing to fear from her,
since she was discreet and very faithful to our common mistress; but that
anyone else who discovered something about our heedless passion might reveal it
and destroy me utterly; above all, that I should beware of the envy and hatred
of a certain steward of the household, who she suspected had the same object of
affection as I, and who had no hope of ever receiving such favorable treatment.
She gave me details on the subject, which would take too long to write down;
let it suffice that I was fully informed about the madness of a young man who
loved with passion and who dared not show his illness to the woman who had
caused it, but he gave cues to almost everyone, by an extraordinary melancholy,
and by working so diligently and carefully that they appeared signs of love
rather than of duty.
After these fine
instructions and protestations that she would serve us forever with great
affection and fidelity, without my ever disclosing anything significant to her
about my burgeoning passion, I retired to my room. But it was not to digest
this good advice and to draw something from her wisdom. It was to be able to
meditate freely upon the charms that I had found in the beauty of my mistress,
and to savor in a leisurely fashion the sweet poison that I had just poured
into my heart through my eyes and ears. I made a thousand agreeable thoughts on
this little jealousy that she had shown about me, and I drew conclusions from
it that made me fell good about myself; above all I stoked my growing hopes
with the pleasant memory of a favor that I was never able to forget; it was a
kiss that was possibly given to me rather out of pity than of passion, but
which had transported me with joy because of its origin.
The
feelings that love gives, whether of joy or of pain, are strange; and those who have lived without
experiencing them may correctly be accused of being utterly stupid. This
subtle, life-giving fire awakens the dreariest minds, and easily refines the
basest feelings; from the moment that the mind is set ablaze it begins to act
like a flame; but in this refinement that the mind acquires for everything
which concerns the object of its love, if one is responsive to the least
favors, one is pained by the least injuries, and this transaction is a pleasant
field, where the thorns are in greater number than the roses. Even as a
favorable look, a little smile, an indulgent word on certain occasions give
great pleasure, it only takes a small “no”, a haughty look, even a bit of
coldness to create deep discomfort. Love is an arbitrary tyrant, who makes his
grandeur known without restraint: he gives with strange profusion, but when he
makes demands, not only does he remove his subjects independence and peace, but
he strips them of every kind of benefit and does not leave them any hope of
seeing their agonies diminish.
Chapter XXIX
By what harmless event the disgraced page drew the hatred of a squire of the household who was secretly in love with the mistress.
The next day I got up
almost at dawn, went for a walk in the garden, and went over in my mind all the
adventures of my life; I found there in my memory a wonderful picture of the
inconstancy of things; I saw myself as a new fruit consecrated to happiness; I
envisioned myself as a straw blown about by Fortune; I trembled at the memory
of past dangers, I sighed with the hope of good things to come, and I was
unaware that I was performing like a toy of my passions. A page, less famous
for disgraces and happiness than I, finally came to draw me out of my deep
reveries, when he came to notify me that our mistress was asking for me, and I did
not delay a moment to obey her. I found her in her room, a thousand times more
beautiful than she had ever seemed to me, and very carefully dressed; she was
wearing a silver, satin nightgown with pink ornaments, with which she was able
to portray herself as Dawn; her lovely hair was fastened as artfully as if it
had been arranged by the hand of the Graces; and I detected in her face such a
great blaze of whiteness that it seemed as though it had been covered with an
exquisite talcum oil; and to add to my suffering, I do not know who had placed
new diamonds in her eyes, which made me lower my gaze.
First she took me by the
arm and, getting back into her chair, she asked me how I had spent the night,
and how did I like serving her; I did not conceal the fact that I had slept
very little, but as to how I felt about being a servant, I insisted that the
chains were the most pleasant in the world and that there were no crowns in the
world that I would exchange for my chains. In the course of composing poetic compliments,
I added as skillfully as I could thousands of signs of adoration, but with all
imaginable circumspection, fearing that my bold passion might be detected. Our
sweet conversation was interrupted two or three times by the comings and goings
of the women of the house, who came to her to give her a message from her
mother; but it ended only when someone came to call her to dinner. And although
decorum prevented her at this time from continuing to listen to me and to talk
to me, nevertheless the way she treated me was so favorable that I still had
the honor of continuing to see her and to serve her. She decided immediately to give
two or three messages to the man who served her at table and ordered me
to stand by to serve her in his place. Thus the squire against whom I had to
guard myself was kept from his place several times, and I was ordered to take
his place. But this man, mad with love and desolate to see that I was taking
his place, wanted me to pay very dearly for it; and, by because of a frightful
jealousy of what I had given our mistress to drink during his absence, he then
undertook to give me a dangerous food to eat.
Chapter XXX
Second jealousy of the mistress of the disgraced
page, and the strategy he discovered to avoid being suspected of love,
surprised while weeping near her.
Before two days had
passed, the relative of my mistress sent me her compliments. Among other
things, she let it be known that her mother was indisposed, and she begged, in
case she came to pay her a visit, to do her the favor of bringing me to her
apartment so that she might be able to learn the rest of the fable that I had
begun to tell them. The page whom she had sent was French, and my mistress,
after having read the letter that she had received, noticed him speaking to me,
and she was alarmed by this. What the page told me was unimportant; he only
asked me how long I had been in England, and whether I would like him to come
to see me during his hours not on duty, so that he could tell me everything he
knew that might be useful to me about the customs and behavior of the English,
with whom he had become familiar during the last five or six years, etc. But
this young beauty, who began to look at me carefully, had an unfavorable
opinion about this innocent mystery: she imagined that her cousin had sent this
messenger to suborn me and to entice me away from serving her, since she had
already become angry at what she thought was her cousin’s affectionate praise
for me. I saw that she was very moved and upset, either because of the message
she had received, or because she had seen me listening to the page; for a while
she kept her eyes fixed on me, and when she saw that I was aware of her looking
at me, she signaled the page to follow her, and she ran to her mother’s room. I
remained for some time taken aback by the sight of the ill humor in which my
mistress found herself, but I was unable to guess its cause. Finally I saw her
return with the page to whom she had finished saying in English everything that
she wanted him to report to her cousin, and, as though this boy knew of my
sickness, to get me in trouble with my mistress he paused a long time at the
door to the staircase, signaling me with his eyes from time to time, as though
he still wanted to talk to me. My mistress carefully watched all of his
grimaces and drew conclusions from them that annoyed her, and which compelled
her to address me in a way that put me into a grave predicament.
After my indiscreet
compatriot left, my beautiful and dear idol remained deep in thought for some
time, then, calling me towards a window of the room in which we were, she said
to me, with a bitter smile, like someone very much displeased:
“All right, my little
master, you are going to be very amused, are you? You will undoubtedly have
very little regret exchanging students, won’t you? Isn’t it true that my cousin
is doing you a great favor by asking my mother for you to perform the same
services for her that you perform for me? She is certainly a very beautiful
girl, whose mind will please you very much; but she will not love you better
than I do.”
At these words her
beautiful eyes became moist; and to avoid letting me see the frustration and
pain in her face she made an effort to leave; but I held her by her dress and,
getting down on one knee, I replied to her:
“Madame, what news is
this that you bring me? Do you believe that I could ever leave you to serve
another mistress? Can you have so poor an opinion of your great worthiness. or
of the goodness of my heart, that you could believe that I might want to
exchange my chains even for those made of diamonds, and even if they were given
as pledges to assure me of a crown? Understand that I would rather embrace
death than such an exchange, and that if I must leave you it can only be for
the tomb.”
When I finished saying
these words, my heart was so filled with sobbing and my eyes so wet with tears
that my lovely mistress had great pity for me. She helped me recover, allowing
me to kiss her hand for a long time, all the while watering it with tears, and
she said such kind things to me that I had reason to bless an affliction that
brought such sweet consolation. At that point the mistress of the house came
out of her bedroom and, approaching us, she must have been surprised to see the
tears that I was shedding; but as soon as I heard the slight sound I thought of
a good plan to make up a false pretext for my eyes being red and filled with
tears. I brought my handkerchief up to my face and pretended to be laughing so
much that tears came to my eyes. And I carried out this ruse so ingenuously
that this good woman was deceived. First she asked me what was making me laugh
so much, but I took a long time answering, pressing myself against the
tapestry, as though, out of respect for her, I had been suppressing an
immoderate desire to laugh. I asked her to pardon me for this weakness, that
made me the most ridiculous spectacle in the world; I was asked what it was,
and the mother already was asking her daughter for an explanation, believing
that I was incapable of telling her without falling back into a fit of
laughter, when I told her that it was a very small man, with the face of a
monkey, with a hunch both on his back and on his front, grotesquely dressed,
who, passing in front of the windows, fell so heavily on his horse’s neck when
the animal stumbled that his coat flew over his head, and the belt of his
trousers broke with the great effort, revealing his buttocks. To this I added
that I was ashamed of not having enough self-control to restrain myself from
laughing so hard at this event, but it was all so amusing when it happened that
I could not have restrained myself, even to save my life. The old woman laughed
a bit at this story and attributed my behavior to my youth, but her daughter
admired my inventiveness, and was grateful to me for my stratagem.
Chapter XXXI
What followed the jealousy of the mistress of the
disgraced page, and how it contributed to the progress of his love.
My mistress did me wrong
in suspecting me of being capable of loving anyone else, but she was not wrong
in suspecting that her cousin had plans for me. I saw that clearly when I was
ordered to deliver a message to her. I was astonished by the warm greeting I
received from everyone in the house, and that could have come only from the
desire that they had to comply with their mistress’ wishes. As soon as the
French page saw me in the courtyard, he ran to tell his mistress, and I saw him
return with two women to greet me. First I asked him to do me the favor of
bringing me to the mother’s room, but I was brought directly to the daughter’s suite, where she showed great pleasure
at seeing me, and displayed many signs of sincere affection for me. I remained
as cold as ice while receiving these favors, and kept insisting that I had to
return, saying that I had been ordered not to remain long because I had work to
do. But these were vain words, I was held there by force; they brought me
jam and forced me to eat it. The discomfort that I
showed was not understood correctly. The lovely cousin took it for a sincere
fear of displeasing the person whom I served, and she believed that there was
something harsh in my servitude. In addition, she said a thousand very kind
things, as though she wanted me to be treated with much more gentleness, and
she cleverly inserted into the conversation some offers of affection that were
not in the least common. All that I was able to do in two hours was to
extricate myself from this conversation; and my mistress, who knew very well how
to calculate the time by which I had to be back without displeasing her, made
me pay for it. After I had seen the sick woman, and had received her thanks, I
came back to find my mistress, and I gave her a faithful and innocent report of
everything I had gone through; but my account upset her very much, and all I
could do not to displease her was to promise never to go there again, and to
pretend that I was ill, in order to avoid accompanying her the next day on the
visit that her cousin had promised. To make things more plausible, it was
arranged that I would have my blood drawn the next morning, and I would not
leave my room.
This was done accordingly; someone came to draw my
blood, I remained in bed very late, and my mistress, going with her mother on a
visit to her aunt, made excuses for me
with her cousin, who was unable to conceal her displeasure at learning of my
illness and sending me some mementos. As soon as her aunt and cousin left, she
sent the French page to me, with her sincere regards, and a very fine scarf to
wear on the arm that had been bled. I received it and replied very politely,
but refused to accept the scarf, excusing myself by saying that I was very well
aware that I did not deserve such a lovely present, and saying that it was too expensive
and striking for me to dare to wear it; but the page thought that these words
were a mere formality, and, unwrapping the scarf, put it around my neck, in
spite of my sincere resistance. As this was going on a carriage entered the
courtyard where we were standing, and my mistress, who was at the window of the
carriage, clearly saw her cousin’s page and the scarf that he was tying around
me. To tell you what happened to me when I saw her is impossible, but I can
sincerely assure you that I would have died on the spot if it were possible to
die of distress and shame.
I quickly moved to the side on which she was to
dismount to offer her my hand, but she did not want my assistance; and when I
tried to follow her to her apartment to defend myself, she order the door to be
closed so that, without having done anything wrong, I saw myself punished with
a terrible torture. I did not lose all hope of swaying this inhuman beauty, and
following the advice of an old proverb which says that he who quits loses, I
decided to wait after dinner until evening at the door of my mistress’ room.
Her favorite woman (?) came out after a while and, seeing me poised on the step
like a statue, told me as she passed that I should not torture myself, since we
were dealing with a very difficult sensibility, and that skill and patience
were necessary to win out; and when she was about to return to that temple
which was closed to me, she promised to continue supporting my case. About an
hour and a half later, this good fairy, who had so generously offered her
advice and assistance, opened the door on her way to the apartment of the lady
of the house and, exiting quickly, gestured to me that I should enter the room.
My mistress had remained there entirely alone, and I could not have had a
better opportunity to
to try to get back in her good graces. I found her
at first very harsh, but her heart was swayed finally by the force of my
protestations and the quantity of my tears. The first thing that she said to me
while pushing my hand away, as I was throwing myself at her feet to ask for
pardon, was something like this:
“What, wretch, do you have the temerity to present
yourself to me after having betrayed me? Do you have some other sort of
unfaithfulness to commit that gives you the boldness to deny the last one?
Could you give me better evidence? Do you want to question the reliability of
my eyes, which have seen it, and make me overlook this truth as though it were
an empty illusion? Haven’t you openly
become the enchained slave of my cousin? What have you done with the scarf that
she just sent to you? It is not a favor of which you should be ashamed, since
you show great satisfaction in serving her and in humiliating me utterly.!”
I let her express all of this emotion, then, after
she had reproached me, I insisted that I was innocent of all of these charges,
and I swore so many times that I had I had absolutely nothing to do with such
behavior that she changed her mind. Her suspicions were very intense, but the
marks of the suffering that I was enduring were great enough to destroy them.
Instead of diminishing because of this adventure, the good will that she had
towards me increased; my unjustly insulted love stripped away the mask and
compelled me to reveal what I had until
this point concealed from her about my birth; on that day she learned that I
was a gentleman, and she learned about how I had been brought up. In addition,
showing how audacious and foolish I had been in my youth, when I very often had
false hopes, I dared to assure her that in less than three months I would come
to ask her parents for her hand in marriage, with a carriage and splendor that
would be the equal of the finest nobles in England. And I was naïve enough to
make these promises of prosperity on the basis of
the word of the alchemist whom I never saw again.
But my mistress was entirely persuaded of my worth and of my future fortune,
and the impression I made on her was so strong that she no longer had any
scruples about giving herself up to her love for me, regarding me not only as a
pleasant household companion, but considering me a disguised nobleman, who
would soon marry her. After this conversation we had many other pleasant and
secret meetings; and what would destroy me was that because of our imaginary
hopes she made her affection for me too clear.
Chapter
XXXII
How
the disgraced page was poisoned
From that day which was simultaneously so happy and so painful for me my mistress devised a thousand ways to see to it that I was with her always. She no longer bothered to give tasks to her squire, so that I might take his place serving at the table; she ordered him categorically to let me take over his duty, and this man, so badly treated by this beauty, decided to take vengeance by killing me. One evening, when I was not to be found at supper time, having stayed too long waiting at the lodgings where the philosopher was supposed to arrive, when something was brought for me to eat in my room, after having eaten just a bit of salad that had been served to me,
I was shocked to find a strange lump in my throat
and under my tongue; my lips became swollen, and fever struck me at the same
time. This swift and violent effect left no one in doubt that I had swallowed
some poison, and those who had an interest in not declaring it as openly as the
others said at least that by chance a spider was found in among the vegetables
in the salad. However, they needed to find remedies; they made me swallow some
warm oil, to provoke vomiting. But when the resident doctor wanted to give me a
spoonful of I don’t know what kind of antidote, I remembered that I still had
some of the marvelous powder that the philosopher had given me, and I did not
want to take any other kind of antidote. As soon as I had taken three or four grains,
I quickly felt the miraculous effect, and the poison resigned its place to this
powerful compound. I was, however, worn out by the great effort that I had
made, and my lips were swollen and black, which compelled me to remain in my
room, because I could not bring myself to present myself to my mistress in such
a disagreeable condition.
But when she heard of this adventure, she hardly
hesitated to come to see me. She pretended to want to take a walk with her
favorite woman on a broad terrace near my room, and from there proceeded to
come to see me, to console me for this misfortune, and to show me how much she
was concerned. I could scarcely respond with more than my eyes, because of the
great physical discomfort from which I was still suffering, and my eyes often
replied with tears. Following this visit, she wanted to make an exact and
thorough investigation of what was clearly a poisoning, since she was furious
at the authors of this wretched attack; but her favorite woman, wiser than she
or I, dissuaded her from this effort, letting her know that the investigation
would fail, and would only serve to reveal things that needed to be hidden. Our
best interests would be served to cover up the crime and to prevent the rumor
from reaching the ears of the good mother. While I was ill my lovely mistress
sent me jellies from her own closet, and she ordered
her favorite woman to bring me a steady supply of foods that had been served to
her; and, to show me even more clearly how tender her affection for me was, she
herself came one evening to bring me as presents some small jewels, with a
bracelet of her hair, which was mounted on a very lovely emerald plaque, which
I accepted more out of consideration for the hand that bestowed it than for its
material value, making little of these expensive objects, since I was dreaming
of the immense wealth that I expected from the philosopher. In addition,
sparked by vanity and desiring to reply quickly and prodigally to the
generosity of my mistress, I hardly let a day go by without sending two or
three times a day to the merchant at
whose home the remarkable man was expected, and I began to become uncomfortable
that he had not returned to London at the promised time, since more than three
weeks had gone by since I had found his lodgings.
Chapter
XXXI
The departure of the disgraced page from his mistress, and how he received a letter from her cousin.
The mother of my mistress had come to London openly to be present at the decision of an important trial, and, when all of her affairs were settled, she decided to return to one of her homes, a superb castle located on the band of a stream, near the Swiss border, and I was totally surprised one evening when the favorite woman of my mistress came to warn me that I must be completely prepared to leave the next day.
This news troubled me very much; I could not be separated from my mistress by the least distance without dying, and I could not be separated without great difficulty from the place where the false hope of becoming wealthy rested. I did not have the strength to ask to remain, and was incapable of leaving without profound sadness. Finally the stronger impulse won out; I put myself into the carriage with my mistress, but only after having left instructions and money so that I would be informed when the chemical philosopher returned. I have not told you with what attentiveness the cousin of my mistress steadily kept informed of my illness, nor how many times she sent her own page to our lodgings, without being able to find any way to see me, because of precautions that had been taken; I shall only tell you that, from the time we left the city, a man on horse followed us, and no one in our group recognized his face. This courier called out loudly for a young French boy who was supposed to be with this group, saying that he had a packet of letters, which had just arrived from France, to give him. l listened to him from the door of the carriage in which I was sitting, and signaled to him that I was the one to whom he should give the packet, at the same time taking from my pocket a piece of gold to compensate him for his trouble. He gave me the letters and, the carriage having been ordered by my mistress to stop, he told me that the letters contained important news that had been delivered to him, and he would go as far as the next stop that we made to eat, to learn if I had anything to deliver to him at that point. At these words my heart was lifted up in joy; I believed that my philosopher had certainly returned, and I was about to insist that my mistress give me the horse of one of her servants, who would take my place until I returned from my trip back to London. My mistress clearly perceived my anxiety and, uncomfortable with my impatience, order me to open my letters; I hardly hesitated to obey her and, having unfolded them, I glanced through them in a moment and turned pale. My mistress noticed, and asked me what bad news had brought about the change evident in my face, but I replied with a deep blush of shame that they were letters from my mother, who was somewhat indisposed.
When I refolded my letter to close it carefully,
this beautiful girl wanted to read what was at the top, to see what the
handwriting was like, or to see how I was addressed; I showed her willingly,
and when she had seen what was at the top, she quickly became upset about what
might be in it, and from where it had come. However, she returned it to me, and
cleverly hid the suspicions she had formed about it. To surprise me, and to
test my reliability, she kept asking me about the letter, when it had been
sent, then what was the nature of my mother’s illness, and what other news had
she sent about which I could tell her comfortably; to all of these questions I
replied with difficulty and confusion, blushing more and more, and the
discomfort that my mistress was creating by her questions was so great that she
took pity, recognizing that it was torture for me to speak on the subject.
Finally we arrived at a certain castle where dinner was waiting for us; while waiting
for it to be served, I asked the steward for a writing case and some paper to
give a reply to the messenger who had followed me. As I was secretly writing in
a distant room my mistress came and surprised me and, not giving me time to
close the letter, which was open on the table, she found that it was like this:
I believe that you have seen enough signs of my
affection to deserve from you some signs of a similar feeling on your part.
However, I have languished for eight days waiting for news of you, but I have
learned nothing; I have wished that you had always been invisible to me, as you
are to all of my people, and that I had not known the hopes in which I have
been disappointed. If your silence towards me is feigned, do not break it; but
if it caused by some external constraint, look for a way to let me know what is
happening, or find a way to come to see me, since I am passionately,
Your
affectionate servant.
and even more your
friend.
My mistress read this letter with a bit of emotion,
acknowledging first the affection of her cousin, but since she saw no signs
that I had had significant exchanges with her, she was not difficult for me to
placate; all she complained about was that I had not revealed the matter to
her, but had instead veiled this mystery with lies. At these reproaches I
offered the respect that I was obliged to show to all members of her sex, and that
wise and inviolable discretion that fine gentlemen customarily have for women;
she accepted this excuse, and ordered me as my sole penance to write these
words to her cousin:
Response of the disgraced page to his mistress’ cousin.
Although you are an exceptionally worthy human being, and you have been very, very good to me, I beg you very humbly not to be shocked if my reply indicates that my feelings are less than yours: the mistress whom I serve is too demanding to leave me any means or any time to reply. It is why you offer me in vain the honor of bestowing such favors upon me, since I am hardly capable of finding enough time to write to you that I am
Your very
humble servant.
In this way the courier’s assignment was concluded, and my mistress mischievously wanted me to send it out before her, either to watch how long I would take, or to have the satisfaction of watching the scorn with which I composed the message.
Chapter
XXXIV
The
presents that the disgraced page received from his mistress, as they traveled
together.
We continued our trip without incident; and during
this time I undertook the task of telling my mistress everything I had read of l’Astreée.
Everyone knows that it is one of the most learned and appealing novels to have
appeared, and that its illustrious author earned a remarkable reputation
through it. Every day I spoke with her about it for five or six hours without
her ears growing weary of it, nor did her favorite woman weary of it, and it
was a charm with which I put the mother and her confidants to sleep, so that
they were unable to detect the glances that my mistress and I exchanged, and
the words that we whispered into each other’s ear. However, the steward who had
poisoned me, and who often moved his horse in front of the carriage-door on my
side, was extremely angry to see my glorious state, and the understanding that
I had established with this lovely mistress whom he secretly adored without any
recompense. I often saw him lift his eyes to the heavens and make strange
grimaces, and although I doubted very much that these curses were meant for me,
I could not help laughing. ??? One evening, when we had arrived at the gate
of a certain castle which belonged to the relatives of the house, and where we
were to stay for two or three days, an Irish boy of the house, who had been
given to me as a servant, came to tell me that a chest which did not belong to
me had been brought to my room, asking me permission to accept it; and as I was
worrying about what it might be, my mistress’ favorite woman heard us, and
said, with a laugh, that I should not find this at all strange, and that they
were wild old rags that belonged to one of her best friends. I was very polite
by this statement and quickly ordered my valet to take care of the valise; but,
when I went to my room to go to sleep, this same person had the keys sent to
me, and I was told that everything that was in my room was mine.
This news took me completely by surprise, and I
wanted to see what these rags that I did not remember were; I opened the chest
quickly and found in it two very beautiful outfits, folded correctly, with
their very striking ribbons; I untied other packages which contained quantities
of fine linen, and in a square box, one of those made in China, covered with
shining lacquer and gold, I found wonderful bottles filled with perfume and
perfumed powders; among these items I found a portrait box covered with
diamonds, in which was a drawing of the divinity I worshipped, and the portrait
was covered with a very small, fine
paper, folded in four, in which I found these words:
If you judge this present solely by its material worth, you will not think much of it; but if you are aware when you receive it of the affection of the woman who send it to you, you will not scorn it; wore these things out of love for me, who wishes to carry your portrait forever in my mind.
This note was not signed, but it was accompanied by
a certain mark that I recognized, and that my mistress had inscribed a hundred
times in my presence with the point of a diamond on the panes of the window. I
kissed the writing and the portrait for a long time, and was profoundly moved
by the expression of a love that I recognized as so caring and gentle. However,
since there are no roses without thorns, I was unable to savor this pleasure
without some kind of displeasure, since I was upset then more than ever at the
tardiness of the philosopher whose arrival I passionately awaited, to compel
him to let me in his fine secrets so that I would have the means to respond
properly to the generosity of my mistress, and also to be generous to her
favorite woman.
Chapter
XXV
Of
a favorable night, during which the disgraced page received other pledges of
affection from his mistress.
The very next time I saw my mistress, I tried to approach her to express my humble gratitude for her presents, but she shut my mouth the moment I began to speak, fearing that I might offend her modesty, or suffer some kind of confusion. I admired in this fine discretion the feelings of a noble, well-born mind, and since I have previously made remarks which did not glorify those great ones who consider only themselves and their vanity, when they make certain gifts, and who often leave good deeds without sufficiently rewarding those from whom they have received them. After receiving many entreaties, they give a kind of bread mixed with stones, and they would be very annoyed not to inflict with their insolence those whom they claim to gratify for their vanity.
My mistress spent nearly the whole day without wishing to lend an ear to the things that I was thinking of quietly telling her, and she made it very clear to me that she could not saying anything about this matter without creating too much consternation for herself; finally I overcame her resistance by signaling to her that I wanted to speak about her portrait, which was a very fine miniature, in which the painter had used all of his skill to show that her beauty could not ever be exaggerated. We spoke at some length on this topic, which was a continual battle between my love and her modesty, but her true fastidiousness was compelled to surrender and to permit my zeal to win out; unable to great a greater favor at the time, she gave me her hand to kiss, pretending to want to place it on my mouth to stop me from speaking.
However, all the members of the household, with the exception of the squire who secretly hated me, came to inspect the new suit that I had received on that day, and, finding me so well dressed, they asked me the name of my tailor, and whether he was English or French, and how much my clothing cost, and many other things, to which I had great difficulty replying. My mistress and her favorite woman also asked questions, to give the impression that they were no better informed than the others; but to me they said almost nothing.
The evening before the day of our departure from this fine castle, where we had been treated with great generosity, my mistress retired very early, finding herself worn out by the visits she had received from all the neighboring nobility; and possibly because she was showing me some favor after listening to some nobles for a long time. As soon as she got into bed, she sent her favorite woman for me, who said to me in front of her mother, who was leaning on my arm, that her mistress could not fall asleep, and that I should come to tell her a story which might allow her to fall asleep. The good mother, to whom her daughter’s health was precious, quickly gave me permission, without giving any resistance, and I was taken by the hand to the supreme pleasure.
I shall not tell you here about things that are
better to feel than to speak, and that one is not worthy of feeling when one
can speak of them. I spent six or seven hours on one knee in the space next to
her bed, receiving all the proper kindnesses that may be given to one who loves
sincerely. We exchanged repeated declarations of a faithful passion, thousands
of objections provoked by fear and dissolved by love; and all of these
anxieties rested on the firmness and a mutual faith. I did not leave my
mistress at all until I had received attestations of an unassailable affection;
the many goodbyes I said to her could not stop our conversation, since she
continued to keep me with her, always having something more to say; and if her
favorite woman, who was dying to go to bed, had not come to warn us how late it
was, he would still have been together at daybreak.
Chapter
XXXVI
The
disgraced page’s sojourn in his mistress’ house, and the skill of her favorite
woman.
After this happy night I had many more pleasant nights, without any anxiety, besides those produced by the greatness of my happiness and the impatience ed with which I awaited news of my philosopher, who seemed to me so necessary for success in my amorous undertakings. When he first arrived at that beautiful place in which we were to stay for three or four months we had more freedom to see each other and speak to each other than when we were in the city. My mistress said to her mother that she was afraid of growing fat, and to avoid this condition by which she pretended to b threatened, she developed the habit of taking a morning walk in an orchard which had been planted along the edge of a small river. I was always summoned to accompany her on this exercise, both to help her walk and to amuse her as she walked. Her favorite woman knew very well what her mistress’ feelings for me were, and I did not hesitate to tell her confidentially that I was of noble birth, that I had been brought up among princes, and that I had a fortune sufficient enough to give her 10,000 crowns five or six months from now without any inconvenience to myself and without making any great effort, and I believed those words so sincerely that I gave her the strongest assurances.
These false expectations that she received, as I myself shaped them, made it very easy for me to do my bidding. This was partly the reason that she often left the two of us alone when she saw that we would be very comfortable without a third party. And when we were wandering far ahead in this large garden, where there were dense woods, this clever girl sometimes turned her head towards some big tree whose beauty she admired for a long time, to give me the courage and leisure to receive some favor from my mistress.
On another occasion, when were seated on the grass near an isolated fountain at the center of a small labyrinth, she pretended to be lulled to sleep by the sound of the water, so that she might not make the two people who were wide awake uncomfortable. If it sometimes happened that my mistress wanted to play the game of choosing servants, which involves picking blades of grass by chance, her favorite woman always arranged it that I was picked as the best loved, and when my mistress blushed and pretended to be annoyed that I had been picked among these gallants, this spiritual confidante quietly apologized, saying that I was a foreigner, whose lineage was unknown, and that she suspected that I was worth more than some very worthy aristocrats. Thus my love floated along, favored by the wind and the tide, and the port was already in sight, when contrary winds arose which made me lose my way, and carried me onto shoals where I was almost shipwrecked.
Chapter XXXVII
What happened between the disgraced page and the steward of the household.
We had already been in residence for eight days in this enchanted house without my receiving any news from London, and the sweetness of the time I spent lying in bed dreaming was disturbed only by the eager desire that I had to see again my chemical philosopher, who, it seemed to me, was actually like those chemical spirits whom those called the Rosy Crucifixion arrogantly claim to be. My mistress’ favorite woman came to see me one morning, as I was dressing in my room, and, pretending that she wanted to see something in one of my chests, she gave me a purse made of Spanish leather, containing one hundred jacobus (English coins) that her mistress had ordered to be brought to me. I believed that it would be a good idea to use some of this money to guarantee the prompt arrival of my man. I looked for someone who might be fit for the task, and I soon found one who was sufficiently intelligent and loyal: he was a married man, but he had traveled all of his life, and had no trouble leaving his wife and children to serve me, since, as an initial payment, I gave him twenty pounds sterling, and paid for his expenses in London and while traveling back and forth. He promised me that he would take lodgings near the merchant at whose home the philosopher was supposed to stay, and that he would make good use of the place, becoming acquainted with one of his servants, who would see to it that he was among the first to be notified when the stranger arrived. He was to wait at London for eight days, but I decided to tell him, by means of another messenger whom I sent to the same place, that he should stay fifteen days rather than return without reliable news about the man for whom I was asking.
The hope I had in this matter had so inflated my vanity that I no longer knew who I was, and I had so vividly imagined myself a great noble that I no longer was living like a disgraced page. I spent too much time thinking about my clothes, affecting a ridiculous, unnatural fastidiousness. I wore so many feathers on my hat that I looked like a woman. I moved with the grave gait of a senator, and frequently removed my glove to touch my hair, and it was only to show off its beauty, or I ostentatiously displayed a lovely diamond that my mistress had given me. This foolish vanity would have made me completely unbearable to everyone in the house had it not been accompanied by an open and generous temperament; no servant had
One morning, while my mistress was still asleep and her confidante had not yet come from her room, I went walking and dreaming through a meadow that could be seen at the foot of the castle, and by chance some of the servants were playing ball with the jealous steward; I did not think that their game was important, but the steward thought that an action I took thoughtlessly was criminal; when the ball came to me, I was deep in thought about something else, and I kicked the ball back, interfering with the attempt to make a point; in a rage, the steward came up to me, looking at me with eyes full of fury, and he went on in a lengthy tirade about which I understood very little; I answered him with everything that I thought would do him no harm and no good, since I had no interest in doing either, and I left him there cursing and grumbling. I had already forgotten this contretemps and, walking behind a row of willows at some distance from the ball-players, I returned to my dreaming, when I heard the voice of a man calling to me very loudly. I turned around to see him and recognized a young attendant of my mistress, who was coming to warn me that a group was preparing to kill me; the Irishman who was serving me arrived very soon, and he offered the same information, urging me to go back up to the castle to avoid some misfortune. But, since a young man’s blood tends to boil and makes him more prone to hope than to fear, I did not want to retreat, fearing that the squire might take advantage of my leaving, and might came after me even more quickly. And I showed such firm resolve to those who were advising me to retreat that they resolved to die with me rather than permit me to be assassinated.
At this moment the squire appeared, accompanied by four of his most trusted servants, and, shouting in their language, “Down with the Frenchman,” they came at me, swords in their hands.
Chapter XXXVIII
New pleasures
for the disgraced page, and the wise advice he was given.
The sun had entered the Lion, and the weather became scorching hot. It was natural for every one at this time of the year to enjoy cool air, but it was customary for sensitive women, with delicate skin, to seek it out with great care. My mistress was one of them, and since her mother never opposed her wishes, she managed to spend the nights very comfortably. In her garden there was a spacious grotto, out of which she decided to make an apartment. She arranged for a bed to be placed in it, with delicate, attractive curtains made of gauze ornamented with gold, its monogram crowned with myrtle and roses; other furniture was brought there, except for tapestries,