It is difficult to account for this act of relative mercy in a man who is described in Don Quixote as the murderer of the human race, a hæmatomaniac who delighted in murder for murder’s sake, one who hanged, impaled, tortured and mutilated his prisoners every day. It may be that he was genuinely struck by Cervantes’s unflinching courage; it may be that he expected an immense ransom for a man who was plainly the leader of the captives. What is certain is that Cervantes was now Hassan’s slave; though imprisoned in irons, he soon showed that his heroic spirit was unbroken. He sent a letter to Martín de Córdoba, the governor of Orán, asking for aid to enable himself and three other captives to escape; the messenger seemed likely to fulfil his mission, but was arrested close to Orán, sent back, and impaled. For writing the letter Cervantes was sentenced to two thousand blows, but the sentence was remitted, and it would almost seem as though Cervantes completely forgot the incident, for in Don Quixote he goes out of his way to record that un tal Saavedra—a certain Saavedra, Something-or-Other Saavedra (who can be nobody but himself)—was never struck by Hassan, and was never threatened by Hassan with a blow. This may appear perplexing, but as the writer goes on to say that Hassan never addressed a harsh word to this Saavedra, it is plain that the whole passage is an idealistic arabesque; the discrepancy between the gloss and the facts shows the danger of seeking exact biographical data in any imaginative work, however heavily freighted with personal reminiscences.
Hassan remitted the sentence, and, remarking that ‘so long as he had the maimed Spaniard in custody, his Christians, ships and the entire city were safe,’ he redoubled his vigilance. For two years the prisoner made no move, but plainly he was not resigned nor disheartened, for he conceived the idea of inducing the Christian population of Algiers to rise and capture the city. It was no mad, impossible project; a similar rising had been successful at Tunis in 1535, and there were over twenty thousand Christians in Algiers. Once more Cervantes was betrayed, and once more he escaped death. A less ambitious scheme also miscarried. In 1579 he took into his confidence a Spanish renegade and two Valencian traders, and persuaded the Valencians to provide an armed vessel to rescue him and some sixty other Christian slaves; but before the plan could be carried out it was revealed to Hassan by a Dominican monk, Juan Blanco de Paz. Very little is known of Blanco de Paz, except that he came from Montemolín near Llerena, and that he gave himself out as being a commissary and familiar of the Inquisition. Why he should turn informer at all, is a mystery: why he should single out Cervantes as the special object of his hatred is no less a mystery. The Valencian merchants got wind of his treachery, and, dreading lest they might be implicated, begged Cervantes to make his escape on a ship which was about to start for Spain. To accept this proposal would have been to desert his friends and to imperil their lives: Cervantes rejected it, assuring the alarmed Valencians that he would not reveal anything to compromise them, even if he were tortured. He was as good as his word. Brought into Hassan’s presence with his hands tied behind him and the hangman’s rope round his neck, he was threatened with instant death unless he gave up the names of his accomplices. But he was undaunted and immovable, asserting that the plot had been planned by himself and four others who had got away, and that no one else had any active share in it. Perhaps there was a certain economy of truth in this statement, but it served its immediate purpose: though Cervantes was placed under stricter guard, Hassan spared the other sixty slaves involved.
This was Cervantes’s last attempt to escape. His family were doing what they could to procure his release. They were miserably poor, and poverty often drives honest people into strange courses. To excite pity, and so obtain a concession which would help towards ransoming her son, Cervantes’s mother passed herself off as a widow, though her husband was still alive, a superfluous old man, now grown incurably deaf, and with fewer patients than ever. By means of such dubious expedients some two hundred and fifty ducats were collected and entrusted to Fray Juan Gil and Fray Antón de la Bella, two monks engaged in ransoming the Christian slaves at Algiers. The sum was insufficient. Hassan curtly told Fray Juan Gil that all his slaves were gentlemen, that he should not part with any of them for less than five hundred ducats, and that for Jerónimo de Palafox (apparently an Aragonese of some position) he should ask a ransom of a thousand ducats. Fray Juan Gil was specially anxious to release Palafox, and made an offer of five hundred ducats; but Hassan would not abate his terms. The Dey and the monk haggled from spring till autumn. Hassan then went out of office, and made ready to leave for Constantinople to give an account of his stewardship. His slaves were already embarked on September 19, 1580, when Fray Juan Gil, seeing that there was no hope of obtaining Palafox’s release by payment of five hundred ducats, ransomed Cervantes for that sum. It is disconcerting to think that, if the Trinitarian friar had been able to raise another five hundred ducats, we might never have had Don Quixote. Palafox would have been set at liberty, while Cervantes went up the Dardanelles to meet a violent death in a last attempt at flight.
He stepped ashore a free man after five years of slavery, but his trials in Algiers were not ended. The enigmatic villain of the drama, Juan Blanco de Paz, had been busy trumping up false charges to be lodged against Cervantes in Spain. It was a base and despicable act duly denounced by the biographers; but we have reason to be grateful to Blanco de Paz, for Cervantes met the charges by summoning eleven witnesses to character who testified before Fray Juan Gil. Their evidence proves that Cervantes was recognised as a man of singular courage, kindliness, piety and virtue; that his authority among his fellow-prisoners had excited the malicious jealousy of Blanco de Paz who endeavoured to corrupt some of the witnesses; and—ludicrous detail!—that the informer had been rewarded for his infamy with a ducat and a jar of butter. This testimony, recorded by a notary, is confirmed by the independent evidence of Fray Juan Gil himself, and by Doctor Antonio de Sosa, a prisoner of considerable importance who answered the twenty-five interrogatories in writing. The enquiry makes us acquainted with all the circumstances of Cervantes’s captivity, and shows that he was universally regarded as an heroic leader by those best able to judge.
His vindication being complete, he left Algiers for Denia on October 24, and reached Madrid at some date previous to December 18. His position was lamentable. He was in his thirty-fourth year, and had to begin life again. Perhaps if Don John had lived, Cervantes might have returned to the army; but Don John was dead, and his memory was not cherished at court. Cervantes had no degree, no profession, no trade, no craft except that of sonneteering: his life had been spent in the service of the King, and he endeavoured to obtain some small official post. Accordingly he made for Portugal, recently annexed by Philip II., tried to find an opening, and was sent as King’s messenger to Orán with instructions to call at Mostaganem with despatches from the Alcalde. The mission was speedily executed, and Cervantes found himself adrift. He settled in Madrid, made acquaintance with some prominent authors of the day, and, in default of more lucrative employment, betook himself to literature. He was always ready to furnish a friend with a eulogistic sonnet on that friend’s immortal masterpiece, and thus acquired a certain reputation as a facile, fluent versifier. But sonnets are expensive luxuries, and Cervantes wanted bread. He earned it by writing for the stage: to this period no doubt we must assign the Numancia and Los Tratos de Argel, as well as many other pieces which have not survived. Cervantes was like the players in Hamlet. Seneca was not too heavy, nor Plautus too light for him: he was ready to supply ‘tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited.’ It was a hard struggle to keep the wolf from the door, but perhaps this was the happiest period of Cervantes’s life. He was on friendly terms with poets like Pedro de Padilla and Juan Rufo Gutiérrez; managers did not pay him lavishly for his plays, but at least they were set upon the stage, and the applause of the pit was to him the sweetest music in the world. Moreover, following the example of his friend Luis Gálvez de Montalvo, he was engaged upon a prose pastoral, and, with his optimistic nature, he easily persuaded himself that this romance would make his reputation—and perhaps his fortune. He was now nearing the fatal age of forty, and it was high time to put away the follies of youth. Breaking off a fugitive amour with a certain Ana Franca (more probably Francisca) de Rojas, he married a girl of nineteen, Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, daughter of a widow owning a moderate estate at Esquivias, a small town near Toledo, then famous for its wine, as Cervantes is careful to inform us. Doubtless his courtship was like Othello’s.
I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth ‘scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence