But before Quevedo had made his name in letters he was destined to earn distinction in a public career, which afforded him a rare opportunity for displaying the versatility of his talents and the soundness of his judgment. Debarred from the profession of arms by his physical infirmity--he was lame of both feet from his birth--he was driven to seek a career in civil employment. An adventure which befell him at Madrid served to fix his destiny. Being in a church at Madrid during the Holy Week, he saw a gallant of the Court offer a gross insult to a modest woman. He interfered to protect her, swords were drawn, and Quevedo slew the aggressor. The slain man being discovered to be a person of rank, nearly related to those who had power at Court, Quevedo was forced to fly the country, taking refuge in Sicily, then a dependency of Spain. The governor or viceroy of the island was Don Pedro Tellez Giron, Duke of Osuna, a powerful grandee, of whom it was said that _nature made him a very little gentleman and his deeds a very great lord_; a man of mark in the civil and military transactions of Philip III. Quevedo was made his secretary by the Duke, and employed in many delicate and important affairs of state, in all of which he is declared to have proved, on the Duke's own testimony, his prudence, courage, and ability. The Duke of Osuna was transferred, in 1615, from the government of Sicily to that of Naples, and thither he was followed by Quevedo, who was made Minister of Finance. In the interval between his employment in Sicily and his higher office at Naples, Quevedo was despatched to Madrid on a confidential mission in connection with the revenues of the island, and was able to commend himself so greatly to the authorities that the affair of the fatal duel was condoned and a pension of four hundred ducats bestowed on him. At Naples Quevedo discharged his duties of financial secretary with great ability and conspicuous success, so that we are told that, while he reduced the burdens of the people, he augmented the revenues of the State. During the years following he seems to have been employed in various high and secret diplomatic businesses in connection with the policy of the ambitious and turbulent Duke, his master, being entrusted with the duties of a plenipotentiary at Rome and at Venice, and managing them, according to the contemporary historians, with much address and discretion. In the course of his political adventures Quevedo was involved, in 1617, in that strange affair among conspiracies which has since been so great a puzzle to historians, the so-called _Conjuracion de Venise_, which has furnished St. Real with a subject for his history, and Otway with characters and a plot for his tragedy. Whether there really was, on the part of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, an attempt to overthrow the government of the Venetian Republic, or whether, as later historians are inclined to believe, the whole business was planned by the agents of the Venetian Senate to enable them to reach certain of their political enemies, is a question which is still under controversy--a controversy in which we are not concerned to take a part. Certain it is that Quevedo contrived, as an agent of Spain, to make himself a person the most ungrateful to the Republic, which pursued him, for some months afterwards, with a fury of hate and bitterness of malice, which, though flattering to his character of political _intriguant_, seem irreconcilable with the theory of his innocence. He even ran a narrow risk of losing his life when on a visit, apparently secret and unauthorized, to Venice. He was chased by the officers of justice, and only escaped, we are told, through the completeness of his disguise, being habited in the rags of a beggar, and his perfect command of the Venetian dialect. He had the honour of being afterwards burnt in effigy, a compliment he returned by pouring a stream of invective on Venice and her government out of the resources of his abundant rhetoric. Venice he called _the lumber-house of the world--the toll-booth of princes--a republic such as cannot be credited and cannot be forgotten--greater than it is fitting for her to be, and less than she gives herself out to be; powerful in treaties, and feeble in power; sumptuous in arsenals, profuse in ships; terrible to those who fear the hulks of a fleet, where fleet is none--a dominion which exposes the hollowness of many fears. It is a state the more prone to dissensions of all that exist, more hurtful to her friends than to her enemies, whose embrace is a peaceful war_,--with a good deal else, in a tone which savours of very bitter recollections.