The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Volume 1 (of 3)

AURORA'S DEVICES TO SECURE DON LEWIS PACHECO'S AFFECTIONS.

THE ADVENTURES
OF
GIL BLAS
OF SANTILLANE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY TOBIAS SMOLLETT

PRECEDED BY
A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICE OF LE SAGE
BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

With Twelve Original Etchings by R. de Los Rios

IN THREE VOLUMES—VOL. I.

LONDON
J. C. NIMMO AND BAIN
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, WELFORD & CO.
1881

THE AUTHOR'S DECLARATION.

There are some people in the world so mischievous as not to read a work without applying the vicious or ridiculous characters it may happen to contain to eminent or popular individuals. I protest publicly against the pretended discovery of any such likenesses. My purpose was to represent human life historically as it exists: God forbid I should hold myself out as a portrait-painter. Let not the reader then take to himself public property; for if he does, he may chance to throw an unlucky light on his own character: as Phædrus expresses it,
Stulte nudabit animi conscientiam
.

Certain physicians of Castille, as well as of France, are sometimes a little too fond of trying the bleeding and lowering system on their patients. Vices, their patrons, and their dupes, are of every day's occurrence. To be sure, I have not always adopted Spanish manners with scrupulous exactness; and in the instance of the players at Madrid, those who know their disorderly modes of living may reproach me with softening down their coarser traits: but this I have been induced to do from a sense of delicacy, and in conformity with the manners of my own country.

GIL BLAS TO THE READER

Reader! hark you, my friend! Do not begin the story of my life till I have told you a short tale.

Two students travelled together from Penafiel to Salamanca. Finding themselves tired and thirsty, they stopped by the side of a spring on the road. While they were resting there, after having quenched their thirst, by chance they espied on a stone near them, even with the ground, part of an inscription, in some degree effaced by time, and by the tread of flocks in the habit of watering at that spring. Having washed the stone, they were able to trace these words in the dialect of Castille:
Aqui està encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias
. "Here lies interred the soul of the licentiate Peter Garcias."

Hey-day! roars out the younger, a lively, heedless fellow, who could not get on with his deciphering for laughter: This is a good joke indeed: "Here lies interred the soul." ... A soul interred! ... I should like to know the whimsical author of this ludicrous epitaph. With this sneer he got up to go away. His companion, who had more sense, said within himself: Underneath this stone lies some mystery; I will stay, and see the end of it. Accordingly, he let his comrade depart, and without loss of time began digging round about the stone with his knife till he got it up. Under it he found a purse of leather, containing a hundred ducats, with a card on which was written these words in Lathi: "Whoever thou art who hast wit enough to discover the meaning of the inscription, I appoint thee my heir, in the hope thou wilt make a better use of my fortune than I have done!" The student, out of his wits at the discovery, replaced the stone in its former position, and set out again on the Salamanca road with the soul of the licentiate in his pocket.

Now, my good friend and reader, no matter who you are, you must be like one or the other of these two students. If you cast your eye over my adventures without fixing it on the moral concealed under them, you will derive very little benefit from the perusal: but if you read with attention you will find that mixture of the useful with the agreeable, so successfully prescribed by Horace.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICE OF LE SAGE, BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

BOOK THE FIRST.