No sooner had I got my clothes on the next morning, than a message came from his lordship. I flew like lightning at the summons, when his excellency said, Now then, Santillane, suppose you give us a specimen of your talents for business. You say that the Duke of Lerma used to give you state papers to bring into official form; and I have one, by way of experiment, on which you shall try your skill. The subject you will easily comprehend: it turns upon an exposition of public affairs, such as to throw an artificial light on the first appearance of the new ministry, and to prejudice the public in its favor. I have already whispered it about by my emissaries, that every department of the state was completely disorganized, that the talents which preceded us were no talents at all; and the object at present is to impress both court and city, by a formal declaration, with the idea that our aid is absolutely necessary to save the monarchy itself from sinking. On this theme you may expatiate till the populace become lockjawed with astonishment, and the sober part of the public are gravely argued out of all prepossession in favor of the discarded party. By way of contrast, you will talk of the dignus vindice nodus, taking care to translate it into Spanish; and boast of the measures adopted, under the new order of things, to secure the permanent glory of the king's reign, to give perpetual prosperity to his dominions, and to confer perfect, unchangeable happiness on his good people.
His lordship, having given out the general subject of my thesis, left with me a paper containing the heads of charges, whether just or unjust, against the late administration; and I remember perfectly well that there were ten articles, whose lightest word, even of the lightest article, would harrow up the soul of a true Spaniard, and make his knotted and combined locks to part. That the current of my fancy might experience no interruption, he shut me into a little closet near his own, where the spirit of poetry might possess me in all its freedom and independence. My best faculties were called forth to compose a statement of affairs commensurate with my own concern in the sweeping of the new brooms. My first object was to lay open the nakedness and abandonment of the kingdom: the finances in a state of bankruptcy, the civil list and immediate resources of the crown pawned fifty times over, the navy unpaid, dismantled, and in mutiny. All this hideous delineation was referred for its justice and accuracy to the wrongheadedness and stupidity of government at the close of the last reign, and the doctrine most strongly enforced, that unexampled wisdom and patriotism only could ward off the fatal consequences. In short, the monarchy could only be sustained on the shoulders of our political sufficiency and reforming prudence. The ex-ministry were so cruelly belabored, that the Duke of Lerma's ruin, according to the terms of my syllogism, was the salvation of Spain. To own the truth, though my professions were in the spirit of Christian charity towards that nobleman, I was not sorry to give him a sly rub in the exercise of my function. O man! man! what a compound of candor-breathing satire and splenetic impartiality art thou!
Towards the conclusion, having finished my frightful portraiture of overhanging evils, I endeavored to allay the storm my art had raised, by making futurity as bright as the past had been gloomy. The Count of Olivarez was brought in at the close, like the tutelary deity of an ancient commonwealth in the crisis of its fate. I promised more than paganism ever feigned, or chivalry fancied in the wildest of its crusading projects. In a word, I so exactly executed what the new minister meant, that he seemed not to know his own hints again, when drawn out in my emphatic and appropriate language. Santillane, said he, do you know that this is more like the composition one might expect from a secretary of state, than like that of a private secretary? I can no longer be surprised that the Duke of Lerma was fond of calling your talents into action. Your style is concise, and by no means inelegant; but it creeps rather too much in the level paths of nature. At the same time, pointing out the passages which did not hit his fancy, he corrected them; and I gathered from the touches he threw in, that Navarro was right in saying he affected sententious wit, but mistook for it quaint and stale conceits. Nevertheless, though he preferred the stately, or rather the grotesque, in writing, he suffered two thirds of my performance to stand without alteration, and, by way of proving how entirely he was satisfied, sent me three hundred pistoles by Don Raymond after dinner.
CHAPTER 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.
This handsome present of the minister furnished Scipio with a new subject of congratulation, by reason of our second appearance at court. You may remark, said he, that fortune is preparing a load of aggrandizement to lay on your lordship's shoulders. Are you still sorry for having turned your back on solitude? May the Count of Olivarez live forever! He is a very different sort of a master from his predecessor. The Duke of Lerma, with all your devotion to his service, left you to live upon suction for months, without a pistole to bless yourself with; and the count has already made you a present which you could have had no reason to expect but after a course of long service.
I should very much like, added he, that the lords of Leyva should be witnesses of your great success, or at least that they should be informed of it. It is high time, indeed, answered I, and I meant to speak with you on that subject. They must doubtless be impatient to hear of my proceedings; but I waited till my fate was fixed, and till I could decide for certain whether I should stay at court or not. Now that I am sure of my destination, you have only to set out for Valencia whenever you please, and to acquaint those noblemen with my present situation, which I consider as their doing, since it is evident that but for them, I should never have resolved on my journey to Madrid. My dear master, cried the son of Bohemian accident, what joy shall I communicate by relating what has happened to you! Why am I not already at the gates of Valencia? But I shall be there forthwith. Don Alphonso's two horses are ready in the stable. I shall take one of my lord's livery servants with me. Besides that company is pleasant on the road, you know very well the effect of official parade in making impression on the natives of a provincial town.
I could not help laughing at my secretary's foolish vanity; and yet, with vanity perhaps more than equal to his own, I left him to do as he pleased. Go about your business, said I, and make the best of your way back; for I have another commission to give you. I mean to send you to the Asturias with some money for my mother. Through neglect I have suffered the time to elapse when I promised to remit her a hundred pistoles, and pledged you to make the payment in person. Such engagements ought to be held sacred by a son; and I reproach myself with inaccuracy in the observance of mine. Sir, answered Scipio, within six weeks I shall bring you an account of both your commissions; having opened my budget to the lords of Leyva, looked in at your country-house, and taken a peep at the town of Oviedo, the recollection of which I cannot admit into my mind, without turning over three fourths of the inhabitants, and one half of the remaining quarter, to the corrective discipline of that infernal executioner, who is supposed to be kept on foot for the purpose of castigating sinners. I then counted down one hundred pistoles to that same son of a wandering mother for my honored parent's annuity, and another hundred for himself; meaning that he should perform his long journey without grumbling on my account by the way.
Some days after his departure his lordship sent our memorial to press; and it was no sooner published than it became the topic of conversation in every circle throughout Madrid. The people, enamoured of novelty, took up this well-written statement of their own wretchedness with fond partiality; the derangement and exhaustion of the finances, painted with a mixture of truth and poetry, excited a strong feeling of popular indignation against the Duke of Lerma, and if these paper bullets of the brain, cast in the political armory of a rival, failed to carry victory with them in the opinions of all mankind, they were, at all events, hailed with triumph by the most clamorous of our own partisans. As for the magnificent promises which the Count of Olivarez threw in, and among others that of keeping the machine of state in motion by a system of economy, without adding to the public burdens, they were caught at with avidity by the citizens at large, and considered as pledges of an enlightened and patriotic policy, so that the whole city resounded with the acclamation of panegyric and congratulation on the opening of new prospects.