In 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the Trinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years afterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the impression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were brought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead at the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes place on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after Cervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with M. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.
Our visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold fringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St. Francis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a sword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition of Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier, and at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two lines of seats for the members of the various academies.
At the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the long rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the curé of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his baptism was discovered some time since.
Among the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour noticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic poet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two Argamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa Cruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent historian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most illustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.
The Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of which were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself. The distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these pieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only heard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of these, with the authors and dates.
Regem cui omnia vivunt (the king by whom all things live) was composed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the same year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen Isabel appeared.
Domine in furore tuo (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the composition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his youth.
Versa est in luctum cithara mea (my harp has changed to sorrow) was composed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.
Libera me (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel Master to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.