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Volume Four: XII.7 531 my Lord, (I replied) since your Excellency insists upon my compliance.” So saying, I went away with my patent in my pocket. “I am now a gentleman, (said I to myself, when I had got into the street) enobled without being obliged to my parents for my quality. I may, when I please, be called Don Gil Blas, and if any one of my acquaintance shall take it in his head to laugh in my face when he calls me so, I will shew my patent. But let us read it, (continued I, taking it out of my pocket) and see in what manner my original meanness is washed away.”4 I therefore perused the paper, the substance of which was, that the King, to reward the zeal which I had manifested on more than one occasion for his service and the good of the state, had thought proper to gratify my attachment with letters of nobility. I will venture to say in my own praise, that they did not inspire me with the least pride. Having the meanness of my extraction always before my eyes, this honour humbled instead of making me vain; therefore I determined to lock up my patent in a drawer, and never boast its being in my possession. chapter vii. Gil Blas meets Fabricius again by accident. The last conversation that happened between them, and the important advice which Nunnez gave to Santillane. The Asturian poet (as must have been observed by the reader) willingly neglected me, and my occupations did not permit me to visit him. I had not seen him since the day of the dissertation on the Iphigenia of Euripides, when chance again threw him in my way near the gate of the sun. He was coming out of a printing-house, and I accosted him, saying, “Aha! Mr. Nunnez, you have been at the printer’s, that seems to threaten the public with a new work of your composition.” “That is what indeed it may expect, (answered he.) I have actually in the press a pamphlet which will make some noise in the republick of letters.” “I don’t doubt the merit of thy production, (I replied) but am amazed at thy composing pamphlets, which in my opinion are trifles that do no great honour to a man of genius.” “I know it very well, (said Fabricius) and am not ignorant that none but those who read every thing, amuse themselves with pamphlets. However, this one has escaped me, which I own is the child of necessity. Hunger, thou knowest, brings the wolf out of the wood.” “How! (cried I) does the author of the Count de Saldagne talk in this manner? a man who has two thousand crowns a year!” “Softly, friend, (said Nunnez to me) I am no longer that happy poet who enjoyed a well paid pension. The affairs of the treasurer Don Bertrand are disordered all of a sudden. He has fingered and squandered away the 532 The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane King’s money; all his effects are seized, and my pension is gone to the devil.” “That is a melancholy affair, (I resumed) but hast thou no hope remaining from that quarter?” “Not the least, (said he.) Signior Gomez de Ribero, as poor as his poet, is gone to the bottom, and will never, it is said, get his head above water again.”1 “If that be the case, my child, (answered I) I must find out some post to console thee for the loss of thy pension.” “I will spare thee that trouble, (cried he.) If thou wouldest offer me an employment in the minister’s offices worth three thousand crowns yearly, I would refuse it. The business of clerks will not agree with the humour of a fosterchild of the muses; I must enjoy my literary amusements. What shall I say to thee? I am born to live and die a poet, and my destiny must be fulfilled. “But don’t imagine (continued he) that we are very unhappy; besides that we live in perfect independance, we are boys without care. People think that we often dine with Democritus,2 and there they are mistaken. There is not one of my fraternity, not even excepting the makers of almanacks,3 who is not welcome to some good table. As for my part, there are two families where I am always received with pleasure...

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