484 Who wrote Gil Bias ? [Nov. 



" Sacontala" as his own, the public would have easily detected the 

 fraud ; and, in all such cases, the presumption of a foreign original 

 would be much heightened if a writer had brought out other works of 

 a similar kind as avowed translations or close imitations of foreign 

 models. If two or three volumes of " The Arabian Nights" had 

 appeared as acknowledged translations from the Arabic, and the rest had 

 been palmed off' on the public as his own composition by the French 

 editor, it is hardly possible that any competent judge would have been 

 so far deceived by this literary manoeuvre, as not to see that they were 

 all parts of the same collection. Now, in this respect, the present case 

 is precisely similar. Alain Renaut Le Sage published, in the course of 

 his life, a considerable number of works, which he acknowledged as 

 ti'anslations or imitations from the Spanish ; and, afterwards, he brought 

 out the novel of Gil Bias as his own composition. The materials of all 

 these works, and the sources from which they Avere derived, are so 

 similar, that they afford the strongest presumption of being all of them 

 the fruits of the same common stock. 



We shall now note a few of the most forcible illustrations adduced by 

 Llorente in proof of the Spanish origin of the work ; and, by placing 

 in juxta-position the opposite arguments of Neufchateau, enable the 

 reader to draw his own conclusions on this interesting subject. 



1st. Spanish words which are found in the French novel of Gil Bias, and 

 which suppose the existence of a Spanish manuscript. 



In speaking of the subterraneous cavern at Cacabelos, and of the 

 woman who officiated as cook to the robbers, Gil Bias says, " ' Tenez, 

 dame Leonarde,' said one of the outlaws to this angel of darkness, 'here 

 is a young man we have brought you ;' " — and, a little further, he adds, 

 " It was La Senora Leonardo who had the honor of presenting the nectar 

 to these infernal gods." The term dame Leonarde applied to a woman 

 of the lowest class of society, servant to a band of outlaws, supposes a 

 Spanish manuscript, in which was written La Senora Leonarde ; for an 

 original French writer would have simply expressed it — " Tenez, Leo- 

 narde," or, if he had wished to have used a more polite address, " Tenez, 

 Madame Leonarde." 



Gil Bias, speaking of his intended father-in-law, the goldsmith 

 Gabriel Salero, describes him thus : " C'etait un bon bourgeois qui etait, 

 comme nous disons poli, hasta porfiar, il me presenta La Senora Eugenia 

 sa femme, et la jeune Gabriella sa fille." Here are three Hispanicisms 

 in as many lines. T'le words hasta porjiar are surely not so elegant or so 

 idiomatical as the corresponding French terms — Jusqu'd eire ennuyeux : 

 while the proper name Gabriella, had Le Sage been the original author, 

 ■would have been frenchified into a Gabrielle — a very common name in 

 France. 



Again : the barber Diego de la Fuente, in giving an account of his 

 learning the guitar, remarks that he had for a master, " un vieux Senor 

 Escudero a que je faisais la barbe." The immediate motive for leaving 

 ■ this phrase in the original Spanish was the impossibihty of rendering 

 correctly the term escudero in the sense here intended, which is that of 

 a sort of upper servant personally attending on a lady of quality. There 

 is no corresponding term in French, or in any other modern language, 

 because that class of servants was never known but in the Spanish 

 dominions. It is long since gone out of use in Spain ; and the frequent 



