Government official informed him that a note would be made of his application, and the guileless, innocent old man went away in happy ignorance of the fact that he had been told not to come troubling the slumbers of Barnacle in his impertinent officious way. Within a year the father had died, and on the last day of July, 1579, the widowed mother of Cervantes and her daughter Andrea (married some years previously to Nicolas de Ovando) were appealing to the good offices of the Redemptorists, an admirable order, the members of which devoted themselves to the task of freeing the galley-slaves by purchase, or in some instances by taking the prisoner's place in the dungeon, or at the oar, trusting him to do his utmost to relieve them in turn. The two women had collected three hundred ducats, which Father Juan Gil and Antonio de la Bella took with them to Algiers. Hassan, as we have seen, had paid Dali Mamí five hundred ducats for his slave, and, according to Haedo, he determined to ask double that amount for ransom. He flatly refused to accept the paltry three hundred ducats offered by Father Juan Gil, but finally was induced to abate his demand to some five hundred ducats, which sum the Redemptorists raised by loan and by a grant from the general fund of the order. term of Hassan's viceroyalty was at an end, and Cervantes was already on board the galley which was to bear his owner to the Bosporus, when at the last moment the ransom money was paid. It was September 19, 1580, when he stepped on land a free

The

man once more, five years, save seven days, since the date of his capture on board the Sol. Before he returned to Spain, he had one piece of work to do in which he displayed something more than his ordinary caution and foresight. His old enemy, Juan Blanco de Paz, who either was, or assumed to be, an officer of the Inquisition, was busily engaged in drawing up a series of false charges against him, filing informations and endeavouring to suborn witnesses.' Cervantes, in his turn, drew up a list of twenty-five interrogatories which form a complete history of his captivity the flight to Oran, the expected arrival of Viana's frigate, the betrayal by El Dorador, the letter to the Governor of Oran, the murder of the messenger, and the treachery of the Dominican monk. On October 10, 1580, the evidence of eleven of the chief prisoners, acquainted with the circumstances of Cervantes' captivity, was taken down by the notary Pedro de Ribera in the presence of Father Juan Gil, and the proceedings ended on October 22 with the

1 Diego Castellano's testimony is clear: "Juan Blanco de Paz fue á rogar al capitan sardo Domingo Lopino, cautivo alli á la sazon con muchas mandas de ruegos y subornos, y promesas de darle ó hacerle dar libertad, y diez doblas, que ante todas cosas, le dió para sus necesidades, y mas le dijo, que no tuviese pena por verse pobre, que el le proveeria de lo necesario, y que si él sabia quien le emprestase dineros que los buscase, que el saldria por fiador" (Navarrete, p. 332 et seq.). Sosa says: "Juan Blanco usando todavia de oficio de comisario de santo oficio, habia tomado muchas informaciones contra muchas personas, y particularmente contra los que tenia por enemigos, y como contra el dicho Miguel de Cervantes, con el cual tenia enemistad" (ibid. p. 347).

evidence of Sosa, whose deposition was taken in prison.1

So closes the story of the captivity. The long years of waiting were ended at last; the oft-deferred hopes were realised. Hassan was speeding to Constantinople to render an account of his stewardship, while the manumitted slave, after so many years of expectant longing, of vehement struggle and silent renunciation, was turning his face towards the little western town of his boyhood, the Mecca of his visions, where his widowed mother lived. He had not lacked gall to make oppression bitter; but the sternest fates and the hardest taskmasters were powerless to sour that fine nature or to deaden that buoyant, sympathetic temperament. The dungeon and the imminence of torture, the suspicion of half-hearted friends, and the malignant baseness of the vilest enemy, left him still the same open, generous spirit. To say that when he left his home of servitude he was in every respect the same

1 The witnesses were (1) Alonso Aragonés, of Córdoba; (2) Diego Castellano, of Toledo; (3) Rodrigo de Chaves, of Badajoz; (4) Hernando de Vega, of Cádiz; (5) Juan de Valcázar, of Málaga; (6) Domingo Lopino, of Sardinia; (7) Fernando de Vega, of Toledo; (8) Cristóbal de Villalón, of Valbuena; (9) Diego de Benavides, of Baeza; (10) Luís de Pedrosa, of Osuna; and (11) Fray Feliciano Enríquez, of Yepes.

Sosa's evidence, as he himself says, was taken separately "por causa di mi continuo y estrecho encerramiento en que mi patron me tiene en cadenas."

Fray Juan Gil and his fellow-worker, Fray Jorge de Olivar, are introduced in the fourth act of the Trato de Argel:

"Un fraile trinitario_cristianísimo

Amigo de hacer bien y conocido," etc., etc.

F

man as when he entered it, would be to say that he was deaf to the voice of wisdom and blind to the disillusioning teaching of experience. He had had borne in on him "the sense that every struggle brings defeat," and had realised the width and depth of the vast abyss which yawns between the easy project and the painful, nebulous, far-off achievement. Something of the invincible confidence, the early ardour, the unquestioning trustfulness of youth had passed with the passing years and melted into the gray, sombre ether of the past; but nothing misanthropic mingled with his splendid scorn, his magnificent disdain for the base and the ignoble; nothing of the cruel, fierce indignation of Swift gleamed from those quiet, searching eyes, which watched the absurdities of his fellow-men with a humorous, whimsical, indulgent smile. In the squalid prison life his strenuous courage, his iron constancy and self-sacrificing devotion had drawn every heart towards him with one exception-that of the scandalous, shameless friar, Blanco de Paz. But Blanco had his reward-his eternity of infamy. Cervantes also, as he himself says, did many things which will be for ever unforgotten. In his thirty-fourth year he sailed for Spain, after an exile of nearly eleven years.

Hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

SUBJOINED is Haedo's narrative of the captivity of Cervantes ("Topographia é Historia General de Argel," ff. 184-185). With the exception that the long "s" is not reprinted, the passage is reproduced here as it stands in the original. It would have been easy to condense it, to modernise its form, and to correct some obvious typographical and other blunders. But the legitimacy of such a process appeared so doubtful, and the difficulties of deciding how far it might go so considerable, that even the retention of such monstrosities as "nutor" and "rambien" seemed less open to objection. The extract may be taken as a fair example of Haedo's somnolent, slipshod style, and the four forms of "Ceruates," "Cerbates," "Ceruantes," and "de Ceruantes," testify to the careful manner in which he, in common with most contemporary writers, corrected for the press. One of the strangest things in literary history is that Morgan, in his "History of Algiers" (London, 1727), has incorporated the whole passage without any apparent idea that it refers to the author of "Don Quixote." His remark, already quoted, is (p. 566): "It is Pity, methinks, that Haedo is here so succint in what regards this enterprising Captive." This is quite equal to Méndez Silva's performance.

"En el mismo año mil y quiniētos setenta y siete a los primeros dias de Setiembre ciertos Christianos cautiuos, que en Argel entonces se hallauan todos hombres principales, y muchos dellos Caualleros Españoles, y tres Mallorquines, que seria por todos quinze, concertaron como de Mallorca viniesse vn bergantin, o fregata, y los embarcasse vna noche, y lleuasse a Mallorca, o a España. Este concierto hizieron con vn Christiano Mallorquin, q entonces de Argel yua rescatado; que se dezia Viana, hombre platico en la mar, y costa de Berberia, el qual qual en pocos dias se obligo a venir; partido el Viana de Argel con este intento y proposito, a este tiempo casi todos los quinze Christianos estauan recogidos en vna cueua que estaua hecha, y muy secreta en el jardin del Alcayde Asan renegado Griego, que està hàzia Leuante como tres millas de Argel, y no muy lexos de la mar, porque era lugar muy comodo, y a proposito de su intento, para mejor, y mas seguramente estar escondidos, y