No. 7 Calle de Cristóbal Colón is the insignificant house where Isabella's High Admiral died in 1506, in obscurity and neglect, his patroness dead, and Ferdinand ungrateful. A hundred years later, in another small house, now owned by the government, Cervantes lived in poverty. Unknown and undivined he walked these streets, looking at the passers-by with his wise, tolerant eyes. Fresh, perhaps, from writing the monologue on the Golden Age, delivered by the Don over a few brown acorns of inspiration, Cervantes in threadbare cape went to his humble scrivener's work, the golden time of justice and kindness existing only in his own gallant heart. It was in Valladolid that the ladies of his household, widowed sisters, niece, his daughter and wife, sewed to gain their daily bread, and as if penury were not enough, here they were thrown into prison because a young noble, wounded in a street brawl, was carried into their house to die.
Cervantes' life reads like one of the romantic tales he loves to digress with in his great novel, when grandee, barber and priest, court lady, Eastern damsel, and _labrador's_ daughter, gather round the inn table--the servants a natural part of the group--in the easy meeting of the classes which is still a reality in Spain. Born at Alcalá, Cervantes' first bent was toward literature, but having gone to Rome in the suite of a cardinal, in Italy he joined the army against the infidel. He fought at Lepanto, where his bravery drew on him the notice of Don John of Austria, that alluring young leader of whom one of his state council wrote, "Nature had endowed him with a cast of countenance so gay and pleasing that there was hardly anyone whose good-will and love he did not immediately win." It makes a pleasant picture, the visit of this high-spirited young hero to his wounded soldier in the hospital of Messina. Later, Cervantes fought at Naples, at Tunis, in Lombardy, making part of his century's stirring history, and all the while storing his mind with the culture of Italy. It was when returning to Spain that some Algerian pirates took him prisoner. His five years' captivity in Africa stand an unsurpassed exhibition of grandeur of character, proving that the highest gifts of mind and heart go together in perfect accord. Loaded with chains, twice brought to be hanged with a rope around his neck, his knightly spirit rose above all misery. There were twenty-five thousand wretched Christians then in bondage in Algiers. Cervantes waited on the sick, shared his food with the more destitute, encouraged the despairing,--a Christian in the fullest sense of the word is the testimony of a Fray Juan Gil, who, belonging to a brotherhood for the redemption of prisoners, worked for his release. In this harsh school "_donde aprendió a tener paciencia en las adversidades_"--the adversities that were to follow him all his life--was chastened to self-effacement and a sublime patience an ardent spirit that by nature chafed against wrong.