_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 human heart, contrived to cheat my sorrows by falling in with their tone and tenor: he was artful enough to reconcile me to the duty of taking food, by serving up soups and lighter fare with so disconsolate an