The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗

on the other hand,

taking out the blood as we put in the water, we reduced the old

canon to death’s door in less than two days.

 

This venerable ecclesiastic, able to hold it out no longer, as I

pledged him in a large glass of his new cordial, said to me in a

faint voice — Hold, Gil Blas, do not give me any more, my

friend. It is plain death will come when he will come, in spite

of water; and, though I have hardly a drop of blood in my veins,

I am no better for getting rid of the enemy. The ablest physician

in the world can do nothing for us, when our time is expired.

Fetch a notary; I will make my will. At these last words,

pleasing enough to my fancy, I affected to appear unhappy; and

concealing my impatience to be gone: Sir, said I, you are not

reduced so low, thank God, but you may yet recover. No, no,

interrupted he, my good fellow, it is all over. I feel the gout

shifting, and the hand of death is upon me. Make haste, and go

where I told you. I saw, sure enough, that he changed every

moment: and the case was so urgent, that I ran as fast as I

could, leaving him in Dame Jacintha’s care, who was more afraid

than myself of his dying without a will. I laid hold of the first

notary I could find; Sir, said I, the Licentiate S�dillo, my

master, is drawing near his end; he wants to settle his affairs;

there is not a moment to be lost. The notary was a dapper little

fellow, who loved his joke; and inquired who was our physician.

At the name of Doctor Sangrado, hurrying on his cloak and hat:

For mercy’s sake! cried he, let us set off with all possible

speed; for this doctor dispatches business so fast, that our

fraternity cannot keep pace with him. That fellow spoils half my

jobs.

 

With this sarcasm, he set forward in good earnest, and, as we

pushed on, to get the start of the grim tyrant, I said to him:

Sir, you are aware that a dying testator’s memory is sometimes a

little short; should my master chance to for get me, be so good

as to put in a word in my favour. That I will, my lad, replied

the little proctor; you may rely on it. I will urge something

handsome, if I have an opportunity. The licentiate, on our

arrival, had still all his faculties about him. Dame Jacintha was

by his bedside, laying in her tears by wholesale. She had played

her game, and bespoken a handsome remembrance. We left the notary

alone with my master, and went together into the anti-chamber,

where we met the surgeon, sent by the physician for another and a

last experiment. We laid hold of him. Stop, Master Martin, said

the housekeeper, you cannot go into Signor S�dillo’s room just

now. He is giving his last orders; but you may bleed away when

the will is made.

 

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 must 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 we saw the breath out of our patron’s body, Dame

Jacintha, In�silla, and myself, joined in a decent chorus of

funeral lamentation, loud enough to produce a proper effect in

the neighbourhood. 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 everything. From the housekeeper’s

distreess 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 favour 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.

 

I could not conceive where this said library might be; I had

never seen any. I only knew of some papers, with five or six

bound books, on two little deal shelves in my master’s closet;

and that was my legacy. The books too could be of no great use to

me; the title of one was, The complete Man Cook; another, A

Treatise on Indigestion, with the Methods of Cure; the rest were

the four parts of the breviary, half eaten up by the worms. In

the article of manuscripts, the most curious consisted of

documents relating to a lawsuit in which the prebendary was once

engaged for his stall. After having examined my legacy with more

minuteness than it deserved, I made over my right and title to

these invidious relations. I even renounced my livery, and took

back my own suit, claiming my wages as my only reward. I then

went to look out for another place. As for Dame Jacintha, besides

her residue under the will, she had some snug little articles,

which, by the help of her good friend, she had appropriated to

her own use during the last illness of the licentiate.

 

CH. III. — Gil Blas enters into Doctor Sangrado’s service, and

becomes a famous practitioner.

 

I DETERMINED to throw myself in the way of Signor Arias de

Londona, and to look out for a new berth in his register; but as

I was on my way to No Thoroughfare, who should come across me but

Doctor Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the day of my master’s

death. I took the liberty of touching my hat. He kenned me in a

twinkling, though I had changed my dress; and with as much warmth

as his temperament would allow him; Hey day! said he, the very

lad I wanted to see; you have never been out of my thought. I

have occasion for a clever fellow about me, and pitched upon you

as the very thing, if you can read and write. Sir, replied I, if

that is all you require, I am your man. In that case, rejoined

he, we need look no further. Come home with me; it will be all

comfort: I shall behave to you like a brother. You will have no

wages, but everything will be found you. You shall eat and drink

according to the true faith, and be taught to cure all diseases.

In a word, you shall rather be my young Sangrado than my footman.

 

I closed in with the doctor’s proposal, in the hope of becoming

an Esculapius under so inspired a master. He carried me home on

the spur of the occasion, to instal me in my honourable

employment; which honourable employment consisted in writing down

the name and residence of the patients who sent for him in his

absence. There had indeed been a register for this purpose, kept

by an old domestic; but she had not the gift of spelling

accurately, and wrote a most perplexing hand. This account I was

to keep. It might truly be called a bill of mortality; for my

members all went from bad to worse during the short time they

continued in this system. I was a sort of book-keeper for the

other world, to take places in the stage, and to see that the

first come were the first served. My pen was always in my hand,

for Doctor Sangrado had more practice than any physician of his

time in Valladolid. He had got into reputation with the public by

a certain professional slang, humoured by a medical face, and

some extraordinary cases, more honoured by implicit faith than

scrupulous investigation.

 

He was in no want of patients, nor consequently of property. He

did not keep the best house in the world; we lived with some

little attention to economy. The usual bill of fare consisted of

peas, beans, boiled apples or cheese. He considered this food as

best suited to the human stomach, that is to say, as most

amenable to the grinders, whence it was to encounter the process

of digestion. Nevertheless, easy as was their passage, he was not

for stopping the way with too much of them: and, to be sure, he

was in the right. But though he cautioned the maid and me against

repletion in respect of solids, it was made up by free permission

to drink as much water as we liked. Far from prescribing us any

limits there, he would tell us sometimes — Drink, my children;

health consists in the pliability and moisture of the parts.

Drink water by pails full, it is a universal dissolvent; water

liquefies all the salts. Is the course of the blood a little

sluggish? this grand principle sets it forward: too rapid? its

career is checked. Our doctor was so orthodox on this head, that

he drank nothing himself but water, though advanced in years. He

defined old age to be a natural consumption which dries us up and

wastes us away: on this principle, he deplored the ignorance of

those who call wine old men’s milk. He maintained that wine wears

them out and corrodes them, and pleaded with all the force of

eloquence against that liquor, fatal in common both to the young

and old, that friend with a serpent in its bosom, that pleasure

with a dagger under its girdle.

 

In spite of these fine arguments, at the end of a week a

looseness ensued, with some twinges, which I was blasphemous

enough to saddle on the universal dissolvent, and the new-fashioned diet. I stated my symptoms to my master, in the hope he

would relax the rigour of his regimen, and qualify my meals with

a little wine, but his hostility to that liquor was inflexible.

If you have not philosophy enough, said he, for pure water, there

are innocent infusions to strengthen the stomach against the

nausea of aqueous quaffings. Sage, for example, has a very pretty

flavour: and if you wish to heighten it into a debauch, it is

only mixing rosemary, wild