The Life and Adventures of Guzman D'Alfarache, or the Spanish Rogue, vol. 2/3

——— TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH EDITION OF MONS. LE SAGE. ——— BY JOHN HENRY BRADY. ——— SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND CONSIDERABLY IMPROVED. ——— IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. ——— LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. — 1823.
London: Printed by J. Nichols and Son, 25, Parliament-street.
Wisdom is better than riches, since Fortune is but a fickle goddess, who bereaves us one day of what she has bestowed on us the preceding. During the course of our lives she makes us resemble comedians, who have every day new parts to study, and must appear in different characters. Who could have thought that, after having served the cook so faithfully, he would have turned me out of doors for so trifling an offence? It is true, that thus the world wags, and that persons of much greater consequence than myself are constantly treated in the same manner by the great upon the most trivial occasion, after having rendered them a thousand services.
Stop, Guzman, cry you, or you will lose yourself in moral reflections. Whither will this learned discourse lead you? To my basket again, reply I; yes, my friend, to my basket, which, having now become to me as useful as eloquence was to Demosthenes, or stratagems to Ulysses, consoled me under my present misfortune. Long may the basket-trade flourish, which a man, having once tried, will never fail to resume. I must candidly confess that when I returned to it I was much in the same condition as when I was fool enough to leave it; for all the produce of my former knaveries, during the time I had been scullion, had gone as lightly as it came, and, with the exception of a finer suit of clothes, I was no better off than before.
That my returning to my old employment, however, might not be attributed to my indolent and discontented disposition, I determined, before I purchased a new basket, to offer my services to some cooks of my master’s acquaintance, who knew me. If they had received me, it was my intention to have rendered myself thoroughly knowing in kitchen affairs, in which I had already made so good a beginning, and for which I might boast a most happy disposition; but they had heard of my inclination for gaming, and that nothing was safe within my reach when I wanted money: and thus, finding there was no chance of obtaining another situation of this description, I was compelled to resume my former occupation. I therefore took up my basket again; and though I did not fare so well among my comrades as at the hotel from which I had been dismissed, yet I was once more independent, and completely master of my own actions. Being naturally sober, this sort of life was more adapted to my inclinations than the other, so that I had but little reason to regret leaving a house in which I was led into a thousand intemperances.