The second is more known. On the death of Philip II. in 1598, a magnificent catafalque was erected in the cathedral of Seville, "the most wonderful funereal monument," says a narrator of the ceremony, "which human eyes ever had the happiness of seeing." All Seville was in ecstasy, the catafalque was superb; it did honour to Spain; and they built the catafalque: could provincial town have better cause to strut and boast?[64] The Andalusians, also, are addicted to gasconading, and Cervantes could not resist the temptation of ridiculing both the monument and its vaunting erectors. In his "Voyage to Parnassus," Cervantes calls this sonnet "the chief honour of his writings." After such an announcement it is hold to attempt a translation. This sort of witty burlesque can never be transfused into another language, for its point consists rather in association of ideas, which only those on the spot can enter into, than, in witty allusions common to all the world. The conclusion of the epigram is to this day the delight of the Spaniards, who all know it by heart. The species of sonnet is named an Estrumbote, having three verses more than the proper fourteen. The following translation being tolerably literal, may serve to satisfy the curiosity of the English reader, though it cannot do justice to the composition itself. For the sake of the Spanish one, the original is inserted underneath.
TO THE MONUMENT OF THE KING AT SEVILLE.
"I vow to God, I quake with my surprise!
Could I describe it, I would give a crown—
And who, that gazes on it in the town,
But stands aghast to see its woodrous size:
Each part a million cost, I should devise;
What pity't is, ere centuries have flown,
Old Time will mercilessly cast it down!
Thou rival'st Rome, O Seville, in my eves!
I bet, the soul of him who's dead and blest,
To dwell within this sumptuous monument,
Has left the seats of sempiternal rest!"
A fellow tall, on deeds of valour bent,
My exclamation heard, "Bravo!" he cried,
"Sir Soldier, what you say is true, I vow,
And he who says the contrary has lied!"
With that, he pulls his hat upon his brow,
Upon his sword's hilt he his hand does lay,
And frowns—and—nothing does, but walks away.[65]
The financial occupations of Cervantes at Seville were full of various annoyances; and it seems to have been his destiny at all times, to find his life beset with various forms of adversity. He was accused of malversation in the employment of monies entrusted to him. His poverty was his best defence, but it required other circumstances to prove his innocence, and his honest heart and lofty soul must have been tortured by all the detail of accusation and defence. Viardôt has, by examining the archives of Valladolid, Seville, and Madrid, found traces of various circumstances, which he details. In themselves some of them scarcely deserve record, except as happening to Cervantes, and showing how like the equally unfortunate but more imprudent Hums, he was occupied by transactions antipathetic to his tastes and vocation. The first circumstance recorded by Viardôt is indeed a mere mercantile casualty, full of annoyance at the time, but whose effects even to the sufferer, vanishes like footsteps in the sand, when the next tide flows.
Towards the end of 1594, while he was settling at Seville the accounts of his commissariat, and calling in with much difficulty several sums in arrear, he forwarded the receipts to the contaduria mayor of Madrid, in bills of exchange drawn upon Seville. One of these sums, arising from the taxation of the district of Velez-Malaga, amounting to 7400 rials, (little more than 70l.) was intrusted by him in specie to a merchant of Seville named Simon Freire de Lima, who undertook to pay it into the treasury at Madrid. It was not paid, and Cervantes was forced to make a journey to the capital to demand from Friere the sum in question; but this man meanwhile became bankrupt, and had tied from Spain. Cervantes hastened back to Seville, and found the property of his debtor seized on by other creditors. He addressed a request to the king, and a decree was published on the 7th of August 1595; ordering doctor Bernardo de Olmedilla; judge of los Grados at Seville; to take by privilege on the goods of Friere; the sum intrusted to him by Cervantes. This was done, and the money was sent by the judge to the general treasurer, don Pedro Mesia de Tobar; in a bill of exchange drawn on the 22d of November 1596.
The next anecdote is of more interest; and displays the style in which justice was carried on in Spain. Cervantes wrote from his heart and from hitter experience; when he introduces; in one of his tales, the arrival of a corregidor at an inn; and says, "The inn-keeper and his wife were both frightened to death, for as when comets appear they always engender fear of disaster, so when the officers of justice enter a house of a sudden and unexpectedly, they alarm and agitate the consciences even of the innocent." It appears that at this time the tribunal of the contaduria examined the treasury accounts with the greatest severity, emptied as it had been by the various wars which had been carried and by financial experiments which had failed. 1597.
Ætat.
50. The inspector-general, of whom Cervantes was merely the agent, was sent for to Madrid to give in his accounts. He represented that the documents which served as vouchers were at Seville in the hands of Cervantes; upon this, without other form of trial, a royal order was sent to arrest him, and to send him under escort to the prison of the capital, where he was to be disposed of as the tribunal of accounts saw fit. Cervantes was accordingly thrown in prison. The deficit of which he was accused amounted only to 2644 rials, not quite 30l. He offered security for this sum, and was set at liberty, on condition that in thirty days he should appear before the contaduria, and liquidate his accounts. In all this, it is evident that no real accusation was levelled against Cervantes, and that it was only the clumsy and arbitrary proceedings of Spanish law that occasioned his imprisonment.
Some years after the claim of the treasury was revived; the inspector of Baza, Gaspar Osorio de Tejada, sent in his accounts, at the end of 1602; these included an acknowledgment from Cervantes, proving, that sum had been received by him in 1594, when he was commissioned to recover claims in arrear on that town and district. 1602.
Ætat.
55. Having consulted on this point, the judges of the court of the treasury made a report, dated Valladolid, January the 24th, 1603, in which they gave an account of the arrest of Cervantes in 1597 for this same sum, and his conditional enlargement, adding that since then he had not appeared before them. 1603.
Ætat.
56. It appears that in this very year, 1603, Cervantes removed with his family to Valladolid, where Philip III. resided with his court. There is no trace, however, of any proceedings against him; and it is evident that there was proof of his honesty sufficient to satisfy the officers of the treasury; and his honour in this and every other transaction stands clear. His poverty was the great and clinging evil of his life. Many housekeeping accounts, and notes, and bills, have been discovered at Valladolid, proving the distress which he and his family suffered. In 1603 there is a memorandum showing that his sister, donna Andrea, was engaged in superintending the household and wardrobe of a don Pedro de Toledo Osorio, marquis of Villafranca, lately returned from an expedition to Algiers.
All these dates and papers seem to cast a gleam of light upon the history of Cervantes; yet after all they but render the "darkness visible," and these tiny lights becoming extinguished, we grope blinder than ever. It is generally supposed that Cervantes left Seville at the time of the death of Philip II. (1599). We find that he was at Valladolid in 1603, but both before and after this date it would appear that he resided in the province of La Mancha. His perfect knowledge of that country, his familiarity with its peculiarities, the lakes of Ruydera, the cave of Motesinos, the position of the fulling mills, and other places mentioned in "Don Quixote," shows an intimate knowledge of the face of the country, to be gained only by a residence. The common conjecture is that he resided for several years in La Mancha, where he had several relations, acting as agent for various persons, and executing such commissions as were intrusted to him, and which brought in some small income. But adversity followed him here also, and again he became an inmate of a prison; wherefore cannot be discovered. The people of La Mancha were singularly quarrelsome. About this time they entered on lawsuits and contentions one with another, concerning some silly rights of precedence, which they pursued with such acrimony and vehemence, that the population of the province became diminished.
To some such litigious proceeding Cervantes was probably the victim. It has been said that this disaster happened at Toboso, on account of a sarcasm he had uttered against a woman, and that her relations thus avenged her. The common and the probable notion, however, is that the inhabitants of the village of Argamasilla de Alba threw him into prison, being incensed against him, either because he claimed the arrears of tithes due to the grand prior of San Juan, or because he interfered with their system of irrigation, by turning aside a portion of the waters of the Guadiana, for the purpose of preparing saltpetre. To this day they show in Argamasilla de Alba an old house called Casa de Medrano, which immemorial tradition declares to have been the prison of Cervantes. It seems likely that he was confined for some time; and he was forced to have recourse to his uncle don Juan Barnabé de Saavedra, a citizen of Alcazar de San Juan, asking for protection and assistance. We are told that the expressions of a letter written by Cervantes to this uncle are remembered, and that it began with these words: "Long days and short but sleepless nights wear me out in this prison, or rather let me call it cavern." In record of his ill-treatment here, he at the same time placed the residence of Don Quixote, in Argamasilla de Alba and refrained from mentioning the name, saying, "In a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to recollect."
It is impossible here not to remember the beautiful image of lord Bacon, that calamity acts on the high-minded as the crushing of perfumes, pressing the innate virtue out of each: for in this prison Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote." When we consider the ill-fortune that pursued him—his military career, which left him maimed and unrewarded—his captivity in Algiers, where he exerted a spirit of resistance sublime in its fearlessness and its risks, and whence he returned a beggar—his life spent as a sort of clerk where he gained his scanty daily bread, at the mercy of the arbitrary and litigious ministers of Spanish justice—and that he endured all the distresses incident to straitened means and friendlessness; when we consider that the end of all was to throw him into a squalid prison in an obscure village, where he must have felt all hopes, not only of advancement, but of attaining the means of existence, fail him—where in a dreary cavern-like chamber he passed long days and sleepless nights, weary and worn out:—when we think that he was now fifty-six years of age, a period when the fire of life burns dim—and then, when we compare all these sad depressing circumstances with the very outset of "Don Quixote," we feel that there must have been something divine in the spirit of this man, which could place a soul within the ribs of death, and vivify darkness and suffering with so animated a creation.