Gil Blas - Alain-René Lesage (online e book reader .txt) 📗

for the fascination of Catalina’s gentle virtues, who became more desperately in love with me from day to day, and completed the paroxysm by a formal proposal of marriage.

“ ‘Fair and softly, my pretty friend,’ said I: ‘we must look before we leap into that bottomless gulf: the first point to be settled is to ascertain the death of a young woman who obtained the refusal before you, and made me supremely happy for no other purpose but to anticipate the purgatory of an intermediate state in the present.’

“ ‘All a mere sham, a put-off!’ answered Catalina: ‘you swear you are married only by way of throwing a genteel veil over your abhorrence of my person and manners.’ In vain did I call all the powers to witness that what I said was solemnly true: my sincere avowal was considered as a mere copy of my countenance; the lady was grievously offended, and changed her whole behavior in regard to me. There was no downright quarrel; but our tender intercourse became visibly more rigid and unaccommodating, so that nothing further took place between us but cold formality and commonplace attentions.

“Just at the nick of time, I heard that Señor Gil Blas de Santillane, secretary to the prime minister of the Spanish monarchy, wanted a servant; and the situation was the more flattering, as it bore the bell among all the vacancies of the court register office. Señor de Santillane, they told me, was one of the first men, high in favor with the Duke of Lerma, and consequently in the direct road to fortune: his heart, too, was cast in the mould of generosity: by doing his business, you most assuredly did your own. The opportunity was too good to be neglected: I went and offered myself to Señor Gil Blas, to whom I felt my heart grow from the first; for my sentiments were fixed by the turn of his physiognomy. There could be no question about leaving the royal and most catholic nurse for him; and it is to be hoped I shall never have any other master.”

Here ended Scipio’s story. But he continued speaking, and addressed himself to me. “Señor de Santillane, do me the favor to assure these ladies that you have always known me for a faithful and zealous servant. Your testimony will stand me in good stead, and vouch for a sincere reformation in the son of Cosclina.”

“Yes, ladies,” said I, “it is even so. Though Scipio in his childhood was a very scapegrace, he has been born anew, and is now the exact model of a trusty domestic. Far from having any complaints to make against him, my debt is infinite. On the fatal night when I was carried off to the tower of Segovia, he saved my effects from pillage, and refunded what he might have taken to himself with impunity: not contented with rescuing my worldly pelf, he came out of pure friendship and shut himself up with me in my prison, preferring the melancholy sympathies of adverse fortune to all the charms of lusty, buoyant liberty.”

Book XI I

Containing the subject of the greatest joy that Gil Blas ever felt, followed up, as our greatest pleasures too generally are, by the most melancholy event of his life⁠—Great changes at court, producing, among other important revolutions, the return of Santillane.

I have observed already that Antonia and Beatrice understood one another perfectly well; the latter falling meekly and modestly into the trammels of a humble attendant on her lady, and the former taking very kindly to the rank of a mistress and superior. Scipio and myself were husbands too rich in nature’s gifts and in the affections of our spouses, not very soon to have the satisfaction of becoming fathers: our lasses were as women wish to be who love their lords, almost at the same moment. Beatrice’s time was up first: she was safely delivered of a daughter; and in a few days afterwards Antonia completed the general joy by presenting me with a son. I sent my secretary to Valencia with the welcome tidings: the governor came to Lirias with Seraphina and the Marchioness de Pliego, to be present at the baptismal ceremony; for he made it his pleasure to add this testimony of affection to all his former kindnesses. As that nobleman stood godfather, and the Marchioness godmother to my son, he was named Alphonso; and the governor’s lady, wishing to draw the bonds of sponsorship still closer in this friendly party, stood for Scipio’s daughter, to whom we gave the name of Seraphina.

The rejoicings at the birth of my son were not confined to the mansion-house: the villagers of Lirias celebrated the event by festivities, which were meant as a grateful token, to prove how much the little neighborhood partook in all the satisfactions of their landlord. But alas! our carousals were of short continuance; or, to speak more suitably to the subject, they were turned into weeping, wailing, and lamentation, by a catastrophe which more than twenty years have not been sufficient to blot from my memory; nor will future time, however distant, make me think of it but with the bitterest retrospect. My son died; and his mother, though perfectly recovered from her confinement, very soon followed him: a violent fever carried off my dear wife after we had been married fourteen months. Let the reader conceive, if he is equal to the task, the grief with which I was overwhelmed: I fell into a stupid insensibility, and felt my loss so severely as to seem not to feel it at all. I remained in this condition for five or six days, in an obstinate determination to take no nourishment; and I verily believe that, had it not been for Scipio, I should either have starved myself, or my heart would have burst; but my secretary, well knowing how to accommodate himself to the turnings and windings of the