The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Volume 1 (of 3)Le Sage, Alain René
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The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Volume 1 (of 3)
Le Sage, Alain René
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction; Blas, Gil (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
We were terribly afraid, this pious gentlewoman and I, lest the
licentiate should go off with his will half finished; but by good
luck, the important deed was executed. We saw the proctor come out,
who finding me on the watch, slapped me on the shoulder, and said
with a simper: Gil Blas is not forgotten. At these words, I felt the
most lively joy; and was so well pleased with my master for his kind
notice, that I promised myself the pleasure of praying for his soul
after death, which event happened anon; for the surgeon having bled
him once more, the poor old man, quite exhausted, gave up the ghost
under the lancet. Just as he was breathing his last, the physician
made his appearance, and looked a little foolish, notwithstanding the
universality of his death-bed experience. Yet, far from imputing the
accident to the new practice, he walked off, affirming with
intrepidity, that it was owing to their having been too lenient with
the lancet, and too chary of their warm water. The medical
executioner, I mean the surgeon, seeing that his functions also were
at an end, followed Doctor Sangrado.
As soon as he saw the breath out of our patron's body, Dame Jacintha,
Inésilla, and myself, joined in a decent chorus of funeral
lamentation, loud enough to produce a proper effect in the
neighborhood. The emblem of a life to come, though she had more
reason than any of us to rejoice, took the soprano part, and screamed
out her afflictions in a most pathetic manner. The room in an
instant was crowded with people, attracted less by compassion than
curiosity. The relations of the deceased no sooner got wind of his
departure than they pounced down upon the premises, and sealed up
every thing. From the housekeeper's distress, they thought there was
no will; but they soon found their mistake, and that there was one
without a flaw. When it was opened, and they learned the disposition
of the testator's principal property, in favor of Dame Jacintha and
the little girl, they pronounced his funeral oration in terms not a
little disparaging to his memory. They gave a broad apostrophe at
the same time to the godly legatee, and a few blessings to me in my
turn. It must be owned I had earned them. The licentiate, Heaven
reward him for it, to secure my remembrances through life, expressed
himself thus in a paragraph of his will--_Item, as Gil Blas has
already some little smattering of literature, to encourage his
studious habits, I give and bequeath to him my library, all my books
and my manuscripts, without any drawback or exception._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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