If we consider the effect of all these accumulated circumstances—the travelling on mules, the mode of extorting money, the plunder of the prisoners by the jailer, the rosary with its large beads carried by the Spanish Tartuffe, instead of the “haire and the discipline” mentioned by Molière, the description of the hotels of Madrid, the inferior condition of surgeons, the graceful bearing of the cloak, the notary’s inkstand, the posada in which the actors slept as well as acted, the convent in which Philip’s mistress is placed with such minute propriety, the Gallina Ciega, the lane in Madrid, the dinner hour of the clerks in the minister’s office, the knowledge of the ecclesiastical rights of the crown over Granada, and of the Aragonese resistance to a foreign viceroy, the number of words left in the original Spanish, and of others which betray a Spanish origin, the names of cities, villages, and families, that rise spontaneously to the hand of the writer, and the perpetual mistakes which their enumeration occasions, among which we will only here specify that of Cantador for Contador, and the omission of the words “Duc d’Uzeda,” which can alone set right a flagrant anachronism—if we consider the effect of all these circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result which such a complication of probabilities conspires to fortify.
The objections stated by M. Neufchateau to this overwhelming mass of evidence, utterly destructive as it is to the hypothesis of which he was the advocate, are so feeble and captious, that they hardly deserve the examination which Llorente, in the anxiety of his patriotism, has condescended to bestow on then. M. Neufchateau objects to the minute references on which many of Llorente’s arguments are built; but he should remember that, in an examination of this sort, it is “one thing to be minute, and another to be precarious;” one thing to be oblique, and another to be fantastical. On such occasions the more powerful the microscope is that the critic can employ, the better; not only because all suspicion of contrivance or design is thereby further removed, but because proofs, separately trifling, are, when united, irresistible; and the circumstantial evidence to which courts of justice are compelled, by the necessity of human affairs, to recur, in matters where the lives and fortunes of individuals are at stake, is not only legitimate, but indispensable, before tribunals which have not the same means of investigation at their command. In this, however, the evidence is as full, positive, and satisfactory as any evidence not appealing to the senses or mathematical demonstration for its truth, can possibly be; and any one in active life who was to forbear from acting upon it, would deserve to be treated as a lunatic. Let us, however, consider the admissions of M. Neufchateau. He admits, 1st, That Le Sage was never in Spain. 2dly, Le Sage, in 1735, acknowledged the chronological error into which he had fallen, from inserting the story of Don Pompeyo de Castro, and announced his intention to correct it. 3dly, He allows, in 1724, when the third volume of Gil Blas was published, Le Sage annexed to it the Latin distich, implying that the work was at an end—
“Inveni portum, spes et fortuna, valete;
Sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios.”
He allows, therefore, that the publication of the fourth volume, eleven years after the third volume of Gil Blas was published, was as far from the original intention of the author as it was on the expectation of the public. 4thly, That, from the introduction of the Duke of Lerma on the stage at the close of the work, the history of Spain is adhered to with exact fidelity. 5thly, He allows that the description of Spanish inns, (10, 12,) is taken from the “Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.” 6thly, He allows that the novel of “Le Mariage de Vengeance,” related by Doña Elvira, is inconsistent with all the rest of the story of Gil Blas. The anachronisms in which Le Sage is entangled, by applying a story to the seventeenth century that relates to the thirteenth, prove his ignorance of Spanish history. On this M. Neufchateau remarks as usual, that no Spaniard would have fallen into such an error. True; but how does it happen that the person making it is so intimately acquainted with the topography and habits of Spain? and how can this contradiction be solved, but by supposing that Le Sage incorporated a Spanish story which caught his fancy with the manuscript before him? 7thly, He allows that the story of Doña Laura de Guzman is taken from a Spanish comedy entitled, “Todo es enredos amor y el diablo son las mugeres.” 8thly, He allows that the expression, “et je promets de vous faire tirer pied ou aile du premier ministre,”[B] is not French; it is in fact the translation of a Spanish proverb, “Agarrar pata o alon.” 9thly, He admits that the intimate acquaintance with the personal history of the Count Duke, displayed by Le Sage, is astonishing. 10thly, He admits that the stories of—
Doña Mencia de Mosquera, contained in 1st book, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters,
Of the story of Diego de la Fuente, contained in the 2d book, 7th chapter,
—Don Bernardo de Castelblanco, contained in the 2d book, 1st chapter,
—Don Pompeyo de Castro, contained in the 2d book, 7th chapter,
—Doña Aurora de Guzman, contained in the 4th book, 2d, 3d, 5th, and 6th chapters,
—Matrimonio por Venganza, contained in the 4th book, 4th chapter,