I left the count de Lemos with the last words still quivering on his lips, and went back to the duke of Lerma, who, on my report, sent to ask Calderona for a thousand pistoles which he charged me to carry to the count in the evening. Away went I on my errand, muttering to myself: So, so! now I have discovered the minister's infallible receipt for the cure of all evils. Faith and troth, he is in the right; and to all appearance, he may draw as copiously as he pleases from the spring, without exhausting the source. I can easily guess what bag these pistoles come from; but after all, is it not the order of nature that the parent should nurture and maintain the child? The count de Lemos, at our parting, said to me in a low voice; Farewell, my good and worthy friend. The prince of Spain has a little hankering after the women; we must have a little conversation on that subject one of these days; I foresee that your agency will be very applicable on that head. I returned with my head full of this last hint, which it was impossible to misinterpret. Neither did I wish to do so; for it suited my talents to a nicety. What the devil is to happen next? said I. Behold me on the point of becoming pimp to the heir of the monarchy. Whether pimping was a virtue or a vice, I did not stop to enquire: the coarse surtout of morality would have worn but shabbily, while the passions of so exalted a gallant were in the glare and glow of all their newest gloss. What a promo

tion, for me to be the provider of pleasure to a great prince! Fair and softly, master Gil Blas, some one may say after all you will be but second minister. May be so; but at bottom the honour of both these posts is equal; the difference lies in the profit only. While executing these honourable commissions, and getting forward daily in the good graces of the prime minister, what a happy being should I have been, if statesmen were born with a set of intestines to turn the cameleon's diet into chyle! It was more than two months since I had got rid of my grand lodging, and had taken up my quarters in a little room scarcely good enough for a banker's clerk. Though this was not quite as it should be, yet since I went out betimes in the morning, and never returned at night before bed-time, there was not much to quarrel about on that score. All day I was the hero of my own stage, or rather of the duke's. It was a principal part that I was playing. But when I retired from this brilliant theatre to my own cockloft, the great lord vanished, and poor Gil Blas was left behind, without a royal image in his pocket, and what was worse, without the means of conjuring up his glorious resemblance. Besides that it would have wounded my pride to have divulged my necessities, there was not a creature of my acquaintance who could have assisted me but Navarro, and him I had too palpably neglected since my introduction at court, to venture on soliciting his benevolence.

I had been obliged to sell my wardrobe article by article. There was nothing more left than was absolutely necessary to make a decent appearance. I no longer went to the ordinary, because I had no longer wherewithal to pay my score. How then did I make shift to keep body and soul together? There was every morning, in our offices, a scanty breakfast set out, consisting of a little bread and wine; this was the whole of our commons on the minister's establishment. I never knew what it was to exceed this stint during the day, and at night I most frequently went supperless to bed.

Such was the fare of a man who made a splendid figure at court; but his illustrious fortunes, like those of other courtiers, were more a subject of pity than of grudge. I could no longer resist the pressure of my circumstances, and ultimately resolved on their disclosure at a seasonable opportunity. By good luck such an occasion offered at the Escurial, whither the king and the prince of Spain removed some days afterwards.

CHAPTER VI.

Gil Blas gives the duke of Lerma a hint of his wretched condition. That minister deals with him

accordingly.

WHEN the king kept his court at the Escurial, all the world was at free quarters: under such easy circumstances I did not feel where the saddle galled. My bed was in a wardrobe near the duke's chamber. One morning that minister, having got up according to his cursed custom at daybreak, made me take my writing apparatus, and follow him into the palace gardens. We went and sat down under an avenue of trees; myself, as he would have it, in the posture of a man writing on the crown of his hat: his attitude was with a paper in his hand; and any one would have supposed he had been reading. At some distance, we must have looked as if the scale of Europe was to turn upon our decision; but between ourselves, who partook of it, the talk was miserably trifling.

For more than an hour had I been tickling his excellency's fancy with all the conceits, engendered by a merry nature and an eccentric course of life, when two magpies perched on the trees above us. Their clack and clatter was so obstreperous, as to

force our attention whether we would or no. These birds, said the duke, seem to be in dudgeon with one another. I should like to learn the cause of their quarrel. My lord, said I, your curiosity reminds me of an Indian story in Pilpay or some other fabulist. The minister insisted on the particulars, and I related them in the following terms:

There reigned in Persia a good monarch, who not being blessed with capacities of sufficient compass to govern his dominions in his own person, left the care of them to his grand vizier. That minister, whose name was Atalmuc, was possessed of firstrate talents. He supported the weight of that. unwieldy monarchy, without sinking under the burden. He preserved it in profound peace. His art consisted in uniting the love of the royal authority with the reverence of it; while the people at large looked up to the vizier as to an affectionate father, though a devoted servant of his prince. Atalmuc had a young Cachemirian among his secretaries, by name Zeangir, to whom he was particularly attached. He took pleasure in his conversation, invited him frequently to the chace, and opened to him his most secret thoughts. One day as they were hunting together in a wood, the vizier, at the croaking of two ravens on a tree, said to his secretary: I should like to know what those birds are talking about in their jargon. My lord, answered the Cachemirian, wishes may be fulfilled. Indeed! How so?

your