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-1-

THE ADVENTURES OF GIL BLAS OF

SANTILLANE

By

Alain-René Lesage

Translated from the French

By

Tobias Smollett

Published by the Ex-classics Project, 2009

http://www.exclassics.com

Public Domain

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-2-

CONTENTS

Bibliographic Note and Acknowlegdements.................................................................9

The Author's Declaration.............................................................................................10

Gil Blas to the Reader..................................................................................................11

Introduction by Wm. Morton Fullerton.......................................................................12

HISTORY OF GIL BLAS OF SANTILLANE.

BOOK THE FIRST.

CH. I. -- The birth and education of Gil Blas. .............................................................22

CH. II -- Gil Blas' alarm on his road to Pegnaflor; his adventures on his arrival in that town; and the character of the men with whom he supped..........................................24 CH III. -- The muleteer's temptation on the road; its consequences, and the situation of

Gil Blas between Scylla and Charybdis.......................................................................29

CH IV. -- Description of the subterraneous dwelling and its contents........................31 CH V. -- The arrival of the banditti in the subterraneous retreat, with an account of

their pleasant conversation...........................................................................................33

CH VI. -- The attempt of Gil Blas to escape, and its success......................................37 CH VII. -- Gil Blas, not being able to do what he likes, does what he can.................39 CH VIII. -- Gil Blas goes out with the gang, and performs an exploit on the

CH. IX. -- A more serious incident..............................................................................42

CH. X. -- The lady's treatment from the robbers. The event of the great design,

conceived by Gil Blas..................................................................................................44

CH. XI -- The history of Donna Mencia de Mosquera................................................47

CH. XII. -- A disagreeable interruption.......................................................................51

CH. XIII. -- The lucky means by which Gil Blas escaped from prison, and his travels CH. XIV. -- Donna Mencia's reception of him at Burgos. ..........................................55 CH. XV. -- Gil Blas dresses himself to more advantage, and receives a second present

from the lady. His equipage on setting out from Burgos.............................................57

CH. XVI. -- Showing that prosperity will slip through a man's fingers. .....................60 CH. XVII. -- The measures Gil Blas took after the adventure of the ready-furnished

lodging. ........................................................................................................................64

BOOK THE SECOND.

CH. I. -- Fabricio introduces Gil Blas to the Licentiate Sédillo, and procures him a reception. The domestic economy of that clergyman. Picture of his housekeeper......69

GIL BLAS

-3- CH. II. -- The canon's illness; his treatment; the consequence; the legacy to

Gil Blas. .......................................................................................................................73

CH. III. -- Gil Blas enters into Doctor Sangrado's service, and becomes a famous CH. IV. -- Gil Blas goes on practising physic with equal success and ability.

Adventure of the recovered ring..................................................................................80

CH. V. -- Sequel of the foregoing adventure. Gil Blas retires from practice, and from

the neighbourhood of Valladolid.................................................................................85

CH. VI. -- His route from Valladolid, with a description of his fellow-traveller........89

CH. VII. -- The journeyman barber's story..................................................................91

CH. VIII. -- The meeting of Gil Blas and his companion with a man soaking crusts of

bread at a spring, and the particulars of their conversation. ......................................103

CH. IX. -- The meeting of Diego with his family; their circumstances in life; great rejoicings on the occasion; the parting scene between him and Gil Blas..................105

BOOK THE THIRD

CH. I. -- The arrival of Gil Blas at Madrid. His first place there...............................108 CH. II. -- The astonishment of Gil Blas at meeting Captain Rolando in Madrid, and

that robber's curious narrative....................................................................................112

CH. III -- Gil Blas is dismissed by Don Bernard de Castil Blazo, and enters into the

service of a beau.........................................................................................................115

CH. IV. -- Gil Blas gets into company with his fellows; they shew him a ready road to

the reputation of wit, and impose on him a singular oath..........................................120

CH. V. -- Gil Blas becomes the darling of the fair sex, and makes an interesting

CH. VI. -- The Prince's company of comedians. .......................................................129

CH. VII. -- History of Don Pompeyo de Castro........................................................132

CH. VIII. -- An accident, in consequence of which Gil Blas was obliged to look out

for another place. .......................................................................................................136

CH. IX. -- A new service, after the death of Don Matthias de Silva.........................139

CH. X. -- Much such another as the foregoing..........................................................141

CH. XI. -- A theatrical life and an author's life..........................................................144

CH. XII. -- Gil Blas acquires a relish for the theatre, and takes a full swing of its

pleasures, but soon becomes disgusted......................................................................147

BOOK THE FOURTH

CH. I. -- Gil Blas not being able to reconcile himself to the morals of the actresses,

quits Arsenia, and gets into a more reputable service................................................149

CH. II. -- Aurora's reception of Gil Blas. Their conversation. ..................................152 CH. III. -- A great change at Don Vincent's. Aurora's strange resolution.................154

CH. IV. -- The Fatal Marriage; a Novel.....................................................................157

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-4- CH. V. -- The behaviour of Aurora de Guzman on her arrival at Salamanca. ..........173 CH. VI. -- Aurora's devices to secure Don Lewis Pacheco's affections....................178 CH. VII -- Gil Blas leaves his place and goes into the service of Don Gonzales CH. VIII. -- The Marchioness of Chaves: her character, and that of her company...191 CH. IX. -- An incident that parted Gil Blas and the Marchioness of Chaves. The

subsequent destination of the former.........................................................................194

CH. X. -- The history of Don Alphonso and the fair Seraphina................................197 CH. XI. -- The old hermit turns out an extraordinary genius, and Gil Blas finds

himself among his former acquaintance....................................................................205

BOOK THE FIFTH.

CH. I. -- History of Don Raphael...............................................................................208

CH. II -- Don Raphael's consultation with his company, and their adventures as they

were preparing to leave the wood..............................................................................249

BOOK THE SIXTH.

CH. I. -- The fate of Gil Blas and his Companions after they took leave of the Count de Polan. One of Ambrose's notable contrivances set off by the manner of its CH. II -- The determination of Don Alphonso and Gil Blas after this adventure......258 CH. III. -- An unfortunate occurrence, which terminated to the high delight of Don Alphonso. Gil Blas meets with an adventure which places him all at once in a very

superior situation........................................................................................................260

BOOK THE SEVENTH.

CH. I. -- The tender attachment between Gil Blas and Dame Lorenza Sephora.......262 CH. II. -- What happened to Gil Blas after his retreat from the castle of Leyva; shewing that those who are crossed in love are not always the most miserable of CH. III. -- Gil Blas becomes the Archbishop's favourite, and the channel of all his CH. IV. -- The Archbishop is afflicted with a stroke of apoplexy. How Gil Blas gets

into a dilemma, and how he gets out..........................................................................276

CH. V. -- The course which Gil Blas took after the archbishop had given him his dismissal. His accidental meeting with the licentiate who was so deeply in his debt,

and a picture of gratitude in the person of a parson...................................................279

CH. VI. -- Gil Blas goes to the play at Grenada. His surprise at seeing one of the

actresses, and what happened thereupon. ..................................................................282

CH. VII. -- Laura's Story............................................................................................286

CH. VIII. -- The reception of Gil Blas among the players at Grenada; and another old

acquaintance picked up in the green- room. ..............................................................295

GIL BLAS

-5- CH. IX. -- An extraordinary companion at supper; and an account of their CH. X. -- The Marquis de Marialva gives a commission to Gil Blas. That faithful

secretary acquits himself of it as shall be related.......................................................299

CH. XI. -- A thunderbolt to Gil Blas. ........................................................................301

CH. XII. -- Gil Blas takes lodgings in a ready-furnished house. He gets acquainted with Captain Chinchilla. That officer's character and business at Madrid. ...............303 CH. XIII. -- Gil Blas comes across his dear friend Fabricio at court. Great ecstacy on both sides. They adjourn together, and compare notes; but their conversation is too

curious to be anticipated. ...........................................................................................308

CH. XIV. -- Fabricio finds a situation for Gil Blas in the establishment of Count

Galiano, a Sicilian nobleman.....................................................................................314

CH. XV. -- The employment of Gil Blas in Don Galiano's household. ....................317 CH. XVI. -- An accident happens to the Count de Galiano's monkey; his lordship's affliction on that occasion. The illness of Gil Blas, and its consequences. ...............321

BOOK THE EIGHTH

CH. I. -- Gil Blas scrapes an acquaintance of some value, and finds wherewithal to make him amends for the Count de Galiano's ingratitude. Don Valerio de Luna's CH. II. -- Gil Blas is introduced to the Duke of Lerma, who admits him among the number of his secretaries, and requires a specimen of his talents, with which he is well CH. III. -- All is not gold that glitters. Some uneasiness resulting from the discovery of that principle in philosophy, and its practical application to existing circumstances. CH. IV. -- Gil Blas becomes a favourite with the Duke of Lerma, and the confidant of

an important secret.....................................................................................................336

CH. V. -- The joys, the honours, and the miseries of a court life, in the person of Gil

Blas. ...........................................................................................................................338

CH. VI. -- Gil Blas gives the Duke of Lerma a hint of his wretched condition. That

minister deals with him accordingly..........................................................................341

CH. VII. -- A good use made of the fifteen hundred ducats. A first introduction to the trade of office, and an account of the profit accruing therefrom...............................344

CH. VIII. -- History of Don Roger de Rada. .............................................................346

CH. IX. -- Gil Blas makes a large fortune in a short time, and behaves like other

wealthy upstarts. ........................................................................................................351

CH. X. -- The morals of Gil Blas become at court much as if they had never been at all. A commission from the Count de Lemos, which, like most court commissions,

implies an intrigue......................................................................................................355

CH. XI. -- The Prince of Spain's secret visit, and presents to Catalina. ....................359

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-6- CH. XII. -- Catalina's real condition a worry and alarm to Gil Blas. His precautions

for his own ease and quiet..........................................................................................361

CH. XIII. -- Gil Blas goes on personating the great man. He hears news of his family: a touch of nature on the occasion. A grand quarrel with Fabricio.............................363

BOOK THE NINTH

CH. I. -- Scipio's scheme of marriage for Gil Blas. The match, a rich goldsmith's daughter. Circumstances connected with this speculation.........................................366 CH. II. -- In the progress of political vacancies, Gil Blas recollects that there is such a man in the world as Don Alphonso de Leyva; and renders him a service from motives

of vanity.....................................................................................................................369

CH. III. -- Preparations for the marriage of Gil Blas. A spoke in the wheel of Hymen. CH. IV. -- The treatment of Gil Blas in the tower of Segovia. The cause of his CH. V. -- His reflections before he went to sleep that night, and the noise that waked CH. VI -- History of Don Gaston de Cogollos and Donna Helena de Galisteo. .......376 CH. VII. -- Scipio finds Gil Blas out in the tower of Segovia, and brings him a budget

of news.......................................................................................................................384

CH. VIII. -- Scipio's first journey to Madrid: its object and success. Gil Blas falls sick.

The consequence of his illness...................................................................................386

CH. IX. -- Scipio's second journey to Madrid. Gil Blas is set at liberty on certain conditions. Their departure from the tower of Segovia, and conversation on their

journey. ......................................................................................................................389

CH. X. -- Their doings at Madrid. The rencounter of Gil Blas in the street, and its

BOOK THE TENTH.

CH. I. -- Gil Blas sets out for the Asturias; and passes through Valladolid, where he goes to see his old master, Doctor Sangrado. By accident, he comes across Signor

Manuel Ordonnez, governor of the hospital..............................................................393

CH. II. -- Gil Blas continues his journey, and arrives in safety at Oviedo. The condition of his family. His father's death, and its consequences..............................398 CH. III. -- Gil Blas sets out for Valencia, and arrives at Lirias; description of his seat; the particulars of his reception, and the characters of the inhabitants he found CH. IV. -- A journey to Valencia, and a visit to the lords of Leyva. The conversation

of the gentlemen, and Seraphina's demeanour...........................................................407

CH. V. -- Gil Blas goes to the play, and sees a new tragedy. The success of the piece.

The public taste at Valencia.......................................................................................410

CH. VI. -- Gil Blas, walking about the streets of Valencia, meets with a man of sanctity, whose pious face he has seen somewhere else. What sort of man this man of

sanctity turns out to be...............................................................................................413

GIL BLAS

-7- CH. VII. -- Gil Blas returns to his seat at Lirias. Scipio's agreeable intelligence, and a

reform in the domestic arrangements.........................................................................417

CH. VIII. -- The loves of Gil Blas and the fair Antonia............................................419

CH. IX. -- Nuptials of Gil Blas with the fair Antonia; the style and manner of the ceremony; the persons assisting thereat; and the festivities ensuing there upon.......423 CH. X. -- The honey-moon (a very dull time for the reader as a third person)

enlivened by the commencement of Scipio's story....................................................427

CH. XI. -- Continuation of Scipio's story. .................................................................440

CH. XII. -- Conclusion of Scipio's story....................................................................447

BOOK THE ELEVENTH

CH. I. -- Containing the subject of the greatest joy that Gil Blas ever felt, followed up, as our greatest pleasures too generally are, by the most melancholy event of his life. Great changes at court, producing, among other important revolutions, the return of CH. II. -- Gil Blas arrives in Madrid, and makes his appearance at court: the king is blessed with a better memory than most of his courtiers, and recommends him to the notice of his prime minister. Consequences of that recommendation.......................461 CH. III. -- The project of retirement is prevented, and Joseph Navarro brought upon

the stage again, by an act of signal service................................................................465

CH. IV. -- Gil Blas ingratiates himself with the Count of Olivarez. .........................467 CH. V. -- The private conversation of Gil Blas with Navarro, and his first employment

in the service of the Count d'Olivarez........................................................................469

CH. VI. The application of the three hundred pistoles, and Scipio's commission connected with them. Success of the state paper mentioned in the last chapter........473 CH. VII. -- Gil Blas meets with his friend Fabricio once more; the accident, place, and circumstances described; with the particulars of their conversation together. ..........476 CH. VIII. -- Gil Blas gets forward progressively in his master's affections. Scipio's

return to Madrid, and account of his journey.............................................................479

CH. IX.. -- How my lord duke married his only daughter, and to whom: with the bitter

consequences of that marriage...................................................................................481

CH. X. -- Gil Blas meets with the poet Nunez by accident, and learns that he has written a tragedy, which is on the point of being brought out at the theatre royal. The

ill fortune of the piece, and the good fortune of its author. .......................................483

CH. XI. -- Santillane gives Scipio a situation: the latter sets out for New Spain......486 CH. XII. -- Don Alphonso de Leyva comes to Madrid; the motive of his journey a severe affliction to Gil Blas, and a cause of rejoicing subsequent thereon................488 CH. XIII. -- Gil Blas meets Don Gaston de Cogollos and Don Andrew de Tordesillas at the drawing-room, and adjourns with them to a more convenient place. The story of Don Gaston and Donna Helena de Galisteo concluded. Santillane renders some

service to Tordesillas. ................................................................................................490

CH. XIV. -- Santillane's visit to the poet Nunez, the company and conversation.....494

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-8-

BOOK THE TWELFTH.

CH. I. -- Gil Blas sent to Toledo by the minister. The purpose of his journey and its CH. II. -- Santillane makes his report to the minister, who commissions him to send for Lucretia. The first appearance of that actress before the court. ...........................500 CH. III. -- Lucretia's popularity; her appearance before the king; his passion, and its

CH. IV. -- Santillane in a new office.........................................................................504

CH. V. -- The son of the Genoese is acknowledged by a legal instrument, and named Don Henry Philip de Guzman. Santillane establishes his household, and arranges the

course of his studies...................................................................................................506

CH. VI. -- Scipio's return from New Spain. Gil Blas places him about Don Henry's person. That young nobleman's course of study. His career of honour, and his father's matrimonial speculation on his behalf. A patent of nobility conferred on Gil Blas

against his will...........................................................................................................508

CH. VII. -- An accidental meeting between Gil Blas and Fabricio. Their last conversation together, and a word to the wise from Nunez.......................................510 CH.. VIII. -- Gil Blas finds that Fabricio's hint was not without foundation. The king's

journey to Saragossa..................................................................................................512

CH. IX. -- The revolution of Portugal, and disgrace of the prime minister...............514 CH. X. -- A difficult, but successful, weaning from the world. The minister's

employments in his retreat.........................................................................................516

CH. XI. -- A change in his lordship for the worse. The marvellous cause, and

melancholy consequences, of his dejection...............................................................518

CH. XII. -- The proceedings at the Castle of Loeches after his lordship's death, and the

course which Santillane adopted................................................................................520

CH. XIII. -- The return of Gil Blas to his seat. His joy at finding his god-daughter Seraphina marriageable; and his own second venture in the lottery of love. ............522 CH. XIV. -- A double marriage, and the conclusion of the history...........................524

GIL BLAS

-9-

Bibliographic Note and Acknowlegdements

The text of this version is taken from The Adventures of Gil Blas by A.R. LeSage, Translated from the French by Tobias Smollett with an introduction by William Morton Fullerton, George Routledge & Sons. 1913 We wish to acknowledge the courtesy and helpfulness of Ms. Sally Sweet of ITPS and Ms Marion Mainwaring, biographer and literary executor of W. M. Fullerton, in clearing copyright for this publication.

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-10-

The Author's Declaration.

THERE are some people in the world so mischievous as not to read a work without applying the vicious or ridiculous characters it may happen to contain to eminent or popular individuals. I protest publicly against the pretended discovery of any such likenesses. My purpose was to represent human life historically as it exists: God forbid I should holdmyself out as a portrait-painter. Let not the reader then take to himself public property; for if he does, he may chance to throw an unlucky light on his own character: as Phaedrus expresses it, Stulte nudabit animi conscientiam. Certain physicians of Castille, as well as of France, are sometimes a little too fond of trying the bleeding and lowering system on their patients. Vices, their patrons, and their dupes, are of every day's occurrence, To be sure, I have not always adopted Spanish manners with scrupulous exactness; and in the instance of the players at Madrid, those who know their disorderly modes of living may reproach me with softening down their coarser traits: but this I have been induced to do from a sense of delicacy, and in conformity with the manners of my own country.

GIL BLAS

-11-

Gil Blas to the Reader.

READER! hark you, my friend! Do not begin the story of my life till I have told you a short tale. Two students travelled together from Penafiel to Salamanca. Finding themselves tired and thirsty, they stopped by the side of a spring on the road. While they were resting there, after having quenched their thirst, by chance they espied on a stone near them, even with the ground, part of an inscription, in some degree effaced by time, and by the tread of flocks in the habit of watering at that spring. Having washed the stone, they were able to trace these words in the dialect of Castille; Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias. "Here lies interred the soul of the licentiate Peter Garcias." Hey-day! roars out the younger, a lively, heedless fellow, who could not get on with his deciphering for laughter: This is a good joke indeed: "Here lies interred the soul." . . . . A soul interred! . . . . I should like to know the whimsical author of this ludicrous epitaph. With this sneer he got up to go away. His companion, who had more sense, said within himself: Underneath this stone lies some mystery; I will stay, and see the end of it. Accordingly, he let his comrade depart, and without loss of time began digging round about the stone with his knife till he got it up. Under it he found a purse of leather, containing an hundred ducats with a card on which was written these words in Latin: "Whoever thou art who hast wit enough to discover the meaning of the inscription, I appoint thee my heir, in the hope thou wilt make a better use of my fortune than I have done!" The student, out of his wits at the discovery, replaced the stone in its former position, and set out again on the Salamanca road with the soul of the licentiate in his pocket. Now, my good friend and reader, no matter who you are, you must be like one or the other of these two students. If you cast your eye over my adventures without fixing it on the moral concealed under them, you will derive very little benefit from the perusal: but if you read with attention you will find that mixture of the useful with the agreeable, so successfully prescribed by Horace.

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-12-

Introduction by Wm. Morton Fullerton.

WALTER SCOTT, who craved the beatitude -- the word is his own -- that would attend the perusal of another book as entrancing as Gil Blas, was on the side of the untutored public which knows nothing of technical classifications or of M. Brunetière's theory of the "evolution des genres." Lesage's great book, though scarcely answering to the exact technical definition of a picaresque novel -- the biography of a picaro or rogue -- belongs, nevertheless, by its external form, to the picaresque type of fiction; and Scott would certainly have admitted that its picaresqueness was very good of its kind; that it was in fact as picaresque as could be expected of a Frenchman who was conspicuously an "honnête homme" and who signed himself "bourgeois de Paris." But In all likelihood he would have instantly added that it was not the "picaresqueness" of Gil Blas which has given that production its fame; and that, if Lesage's masterpiece has lived so long, and if it lives to-day with such a fresh and abundant life, this constant appeal has been made in spite of its resemblance to the Spanish picaresque prototype. The application of the scientific method to literary criticism during the last generation has steadily tended to define works of art as "documents" of their epoch, and at the same time to classify them according to their structural variations rather than to accept them wholly as sources of human pleasure. The novel of Lesage for the purposes of classification, may be viewed as a picaresque novel, and it is interesting and legitimate to note that it is no doubt the best of its kind; yet there is equally little doubt that thousands of readers who do not know what the word "picaresque" means have for several generations regarded Gil Blas as simply the best of all novels, and that their reasons have been based on qualities quite independent of the mould into which it happened to be run. This is, in fact, the truth which these brief remarks are meant to set forth. In order to become a classic, and in order to hold its own among the books of the world, Gil Blas has had to live down its picaresqueness. The book has survived, and become one of the great books, notwithstanding the characteristics which seemed destined to confine it to the museum of antique literary forms. I Walter Scott's recognition of the supreme delightfulness of Gil Blas has not been general among the critics; indeed, the sense of its intrinsic value as a definition of life must rather be placed to the credit of the uncritical public. Voltaire, referring to Lesage in his "Siècle de Louis XIV," limits his praise to the remark : "His novel Gil Blas has survived because of the naturalness of the style." The curtness and inadequacy of this remark are probably due rather to the fact that Voltaire did not see beyond the superficial traits of this novel, its general picaresque atmosphere, than, as has so often been asserted, to any malicious intent to decry a book in which he supposed himself to have been held up to ridicule. [The traditional view is, however, plausible enough, as Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly has shown in his introduction to the edition of Gil Blas published in the "World's Classics." There can be no doubt as to Lesage having ridiculed Voltaire in two of his plays.] Joubert, whose delicacy was a hothouse fruit grown in the thin subsoil and the devitalised air in which he was compelled to live, corroborates Voltaire, while revealing his own prejudices --after all, is not the main interest of criticism the light it throws upon the critic? -- in a characteristic utterance : "Lesage's novels would appear to have been written in a café by a domino-player, after spending the evening at the play." Evidently this is a long

GIL BLAS

-13- way from the "beatitude" of Walter Scott, but it is nearer the point of view of Mr. Warner Allen, who, while he notes in his remarkable General Introduction to his edition of Celestine in the Picaresque Section of the "Library of Early Novelists," to which this volume belongs, that Gil Blas "has a conscience," is ingeniously effective in arguing that the spirit of Gil Blas is essentially picaresque -- by which he means that realism and materialism are so predominantly its note that it must be classed well below "Don Quixote," where the heterogeneous picaresque material is beautifully fused by the 1magination of an idealist. "It is just because Lesage ignores the idealistic side of man," Mr. Allen says, "that Gil Blas misses being a great creation." On the other hand, La Harpe, who had read many books, but was no doubt the very opposite of a scientific critic of literature, praises Gil Blas not merely, as did Scott, for its entertainment, its agrément, but also for its moral inspiration; utile dulci, he insists, ought to be the device of this excellent book, forgetting that Lesage has himself written the precept of Horace on its title-page. "C'est l'école du monde que Gil Blas," La Harpe continues; and he remarks with singular felicity that Lesage in Gil Blas "has not fallen into that gratuitous profusion of minute detail which is nowadays taken to be truth." This comment suggests the probability that the reproach addressed to Lesage as to his lack of idealism is one that La Harpe would be disinclined to accept; and that they who make it have other standards for judging a work of art than those of the public to whom it is addressed, or indeed than those of the artist himself, especially such an artist as Lesage, who in his "Declaration" to the reader says expressly: "My sole aim has been to represent life as it is" : "Je ne me suis proposé que de représenter la vie des hommes telle qu'elle est." Certain of Lesage's predecessors had already declared it to be their aim to write books which should be a wholesome reaction against the romanticism of the tales of chivalry that had so long delighted the taste of Europe. The sub-title of Alemán's famous novel, Guzmán de Alfarache, was Atalaya de la Vida which Chapelain translated by "Image" or "Miroir de la Vie Humaine." And long before Lesage, the author of L'Histoire Comique de Francion used almost the identical terms of Alemán and Lesage in announcing his tale "Nous avons dessein de voir une image de la vie humaine, de sorte qu'il nous en faut montrer ici diverses pièces." Francion, less picaresque than the hero of Alemán, was undoubtedly what he has been called by one of Lesage's biographers, M. Lintilhac, a direct precursor of Gil Blas; and there can be no question as to the importance of the influence exercised upon Lesage by Charles Sorel's admirable performance. But, however easily even a little erudition can discover possible prototypes of Gil Blas in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century literature of both France and Spain -- however picaresque, in a word, Gil Blas may be, and whatever else it may be -- its picaresqueness was obviously, for Lesage, not an end in itself, but merely a device for carrying out his main project, which was "the representation of life"; and the meaning he put into those words was incomparably richer than was their connotation on the lips of an Alemán or even a Sorel. Lesage found ready to his hand one of the most convenient literary forms tint the novel ever assumed for the achievement of the end he had in view. That end was to hold a mirror up to Nature, and to the whole of Nature. This ambitious project has haunted most observers who have essayed the novel form. It was obviously the end and aim of the author of Anna Karenina. But such is the complexity of human relations, such the variety of the kinds of human plights, such the swift passage of events, such are the endless differences and the fleeting character of the situations presented to the artistic consciousness at any moment of time, that only the most self-confident craftsman would be tempted, in his

ALAIN-RENÉ LESAGE

-14- sane mind, to undertake their complete representation. The mirror in which a writer would seek to converge and to foreshorten the vast spectacle of things must needs be an all-but unmanageable revolving mirror of gigantic dimensions, unless some way he found of dispensing with such machinery altogether. Tolstoi made no attempt to achieve an artistic synthesis of life as a whole. He was content to map life out on a sort of Mercator's projection. Balzac despaired altogether of success, and confined himself to "doing" the multitudinous phases of human activity piecemeal. Lesage, on the other hand, hit on the happy idea of using the picaro type, the picaresque tradition in the novel, to facilitate his project. And what device, in fact, could be neater and more rapid? Certainly not the invention of Zola. The author of the series of the Rougon-Macquart set himself the task of describing the whole of French society at the end of the last century. He believed himself to have improved on Balzac's method by conceiving of a family-tree, with branches sufficiently wide- spreading to illustrate every kind of activity of which French men or French women were capable in his time. The unity of his result was to be secured by postulating a family, the sum of the several lives of whose members should be coterminous with the Conscious existence of all their essential French fellow-types at a certain historical period. The plan was ingenious but artificially ingenuous. Lesage, writing at the opening of the eighteenth century, had, it is true, the luck to be free to employ -- or, in fact, to have thrust upon him by the literary taste of his time -- a simpler trick for the representation of life, The literary air was full of picaresque odours. But, while Lesage came after Sorel and Alemán, and a score of other same story-tellers eager to temper the bombast of the hour by the saving salt of realism, the living models that surrounded him were quite as suggestive as any he might have been led to imitate in the books of his predecessors. Lintilhac, Cherbuliez, Brunetière, have dwelt in detail on this fact. What need had Lesage of a Guzmán or a Francion, when before his very eyes were such conspicuous models for the study of the valet parvenu as the Cardinals Dubois and Alberoni? And why go farther afield than the memoirs of the famous Gourville, which appeared in 1673, if one really feels impelled at all costs to account for the origin of Gil Blas, and to answer the futile question, "Where did Lesage get his idea?" That kind of inquiry explains everything except the essential. Homer and Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Corneille, have beenquotesdbs_dbs43.pdfusesText_43