My parents, informed by those to whose care I was entrusted, that I was by no means likely to become an ornament to the church, were at length persuaded to allow me to make trial of the law. But though at the outset I applied very diligently to the dry study to which my mind was now directed, yet I soon found it suited my taste as little as that of divinity. Of the two, indeed, I think I preferred the lives of the Holy Fathers to the Siete Partidas of Alfonzo el Sabio; for the former, at all events, contained ample matter for satire and ridicule, for which I had a natural turn; whereas the latter formed a mass of heavy reading, replete with incongruities, and clogged with technicalities, which ill-suited my peculiar humour.
During the latter years of my residence at Seville, however, my reading was altogether diverted into another channel. I became acquainted with a French youth, by name Louis Xavier le Bas, who, intended for the mercantile profession, had been sent to our commercial capital, where some of his mother’s relatives were settled, for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the Spanish language.
Though this person was several years my senior in age, a similarity of tastes soon warmed into the closest friendship an acquaintance that had been commenced merely with a view to our mutual advantage. I initiated him in all the mysteries of Spanish life, and he, in return, undertook à me decrasser, as he termed it, and render me fit to jouer un rôle distingué on the theatre of the world. In short, we became inseparable; and our despised and despising fellow-students thence designated us Don Cleofas and Asmodeus.
This valuable friend, devil or not, was the means of my acquiring a tolerable knowledge of the French language, (which has proved of infinite service to me,) and of my understanding being enlarged by the writings of Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet, and other enlightened materialists of his nation, whose depth of reasoning and witty satires were, at that period, effecting such beneficial changes in France; removing from the eyes of the people the bandages of ignorance and bigotry that had so long blinded them to their state of slavery and debasement.
These works, though forbidden by the despot government of Spain, were surreptitiously obtained for me by my kind friend; and their perusal opened my eyes also to the deplorable state of degradation in which my own country was plunged. I accordingly became a philosopher, and, I may say, even a liberal, long before the term was heard or understood in this enslaved and priest-ridden land.
Our school companions, unable to comprehend the elevated principles by which we were governed, shunned us as plebeian democrats and blasphemous free thinkers. But we soon collected around us a set of more congenial spirits, and became the founders of a secret political association, that has since spread widely throughout the whole kingdom.
I had nearly completed the fifth year of my sojourn at Seville, when an unwelcome summons from my father bade me repair forthwith to M——. His letter briefly stated, that, concluding I must by this time have thoroughly digested the contents of all the law books ever published in the universe—my father, as you may perceive, was very ignorant in such matters—he had embraced a most favourable opportunity that presented itself of establishing me in the world agreeably to my desire; and, accordingly, was about to place me, together with a handsome bonus, in the hands of Don Benito Quisquilla, the village attorney, to be by him initiated into all the practical quirks and chicaneries of the law; with the view, if I gave promise of becoming a useful co-operator in the work of litigation, of being eventually admitted to a share of his daily increasing profits.
This prospect of settling down as a country attorney was, as my friend and counsellor Le Bas said, quite insufferable to one of my intellectual powers, cultivated mind, and honourable ambition. If I had finally determined on following the profession of the law, he observed, the only fit field for one of my abilities was the capital. There, he had no doubt, I should soon rise to distinction; whereas, in a country town, my pursuit of fame would be as vain as that of partridges en campo raso.[174]
This opinion tallied exactly with my own; for, feeling myself as superior in mental endowments as in physical powers to the decrepit piece of nobility who owned the vast plains surrounding the miserable inheritance to which I was born, I saw no reason why I should be inferior to him in worldly wealth and consideration. With these and various other arguments, therefore, I replied to my father, urging him to break off with Don Benito, and furnish me with the means of accompanying my friend, Le Bas, to Madrid, where he was about to establish himself as a merchant. My father, however, would not listen to reason. He replied, that the Duke of Medina Celi was born a grandee of Spain, and I a peasant; and, with respect to a reflection I had cast upon the justice of Providence in distributing so unequally the good things of this world, he maintained that, though my life was doomed to be one of labour, yet it was as sweet, probably even sweeter, than that of him whose lot I seemed so much to envy.
Finding that it was predicar en el desierto[175] to argue with my father, and that my mother did not give me the support on which I had reckoned, I had no alternative but to acquiesce in the proposed plan, and wait for the favourable moment of relieving myself from the paternal yoke. I, therefore, took a most affectionate leave of Le Bas, who promised to summons me to the capital as soon as he had an opportunity of serving me, and, with a very bad grace, obeying my father’s commands, proceeded to M——.