"
There were, after all, compensations in this evening of life. As long as
his dropsy would let him, he climbed the hilly street of the Olivar to
say his prayers in the little oratory. He passed many a cheerful hour of
gossip with Mother Francisca Romero, the independent superior of the
Trinitarian Convent, until the time when the Supreme Council, jealous of
the freedom of the good lady's life, walled up the door which led from
her house to her convent and cut her off from her nuns. He sometimes
dropped into the studios of Carducho and Caxes, and one of them made a
sketch of him one fortunate day. He was friends with many of the
easy-going Bohemians who swarmed in the quarter,--Cristobal de Mesa,
Quevedo, and Mendoza, whose writings, Don Miguel says, are distinguished
by the absence of all that would bring a "blush to the cheek of a young
person,"--
"Por graves, puros, castos y excelentes."
In the same street where Cervantes lived and died, the great Lope de
Vega passed his edifying old age. This phenomenon of incredible
fecundity is one of the mysteries of that time. Few men of letters have
ever won so marvellous a success in their own lives, few have been so
little read after death. The inscription on Lope's house records that he
is the author of two thousand comedies and twenty-one million of verses.
Making all possible deductions for Spanish exaggeration, it must still
be admitted that his activity and fertility of genius were prodigious.
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