[Transcriber's note: the illustrations in the source volumes were
uncaptioned. The captions I've added are my best guess as to what is
going on in the illustrations.]
[Frontispiece: Gil Blas being presented to royalty]
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
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.
CHAPTER I.
The Birth and Education of Gil Blas.