The romance of Oxford or
Heidelberg or Harvard is tame compared with that electric life of a
new-born world that wrought and flourished in Padua, Paris, and Alcala.
Walking with my long-robed scholarly guide through the still, shadowy
courts, under Renaissance arches and Moorish roofs, hearing him talking
with enthusiasm of the glories of the past and never a word of the
events of the present, in his pure, strong, guttural Castilian, no
living thing in view but an occasional Franciscan gliding under the
graceful arcades, it was not difficult to imagine the scenes of the
intense young life which filled these noble halls in that fresh day of
aspiration and hope, when this Spanish sunlight fell on the marble and
the granite bright and sharp from the chisel of the builder, and the
great Ximenez looked proudly on his perfect work and saw that it was
good.
The twilight of superstition still hung heavily over Europe. But this
was nevertheless the breaking of dawn, the herald of the fuller day of
investigation and inquiry.
It was into this rosy morning of the modern world that Cervantes was
ushered in the season of the falling leaves of 1547. He was born to a
life of poverty and struggle and an immortality of fame. His own city
did not know him while he lived, and now is only known through him.
Pilgrims often come from over distant seas to breathe for one day the
air that filled his baby lungs, and to muse among the scenes that shaped
his earliest thoughts.
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