He headed a dozen attempts at flight or
insurrection, and yet his thrifty owners would not kill him. They
thought a man who bore letters from a prince, and who continued cock of
his walk through years of servitude, would one day bring a round ransom.
At last the tardy day of his redemption came, but not from the
cold-hearted tyrant he had so nobly served. The matter was presented to
him by Cervantes's comrades, but he would do nothing. So that Don
Roderick sold his estate and his sisters sacrificed their dowry to buy
the freedom of the captive brothers.
They came back to Spain still young enough to be fond of glory, and
simple-hearted enough to believe in the justice of the great. They
immediately joined the army and served in the war with Portugal. The
elder brother made his way and got some little promotion, but Miguel got
married and discharged, and wrote verses and plays, and took a small
office in Seville, and moved with the Court to Valladolid; and kept his
accounts badly, and was too honest to steal, and so got into jail, and
grew every year poorer and wittier and better; he was a public
amanuensis, a business agent, a sub-tax-gatherer,--anything to keep his
lean larder garnished with scant ammunition against the wolf hunger. In
these few lines you have the pitiful story of the life of the greatest
of Spaniards, up to his return to Madrid in 1606, when he was nearly
sixty years old.
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