The Entrance to Cervantes's Prison

an elastic, light step, and in repose seem ever ready to move, suddenly, without effort the whole body ready to spring. Our notions of Spanish indolence are true enough of the "classes," but the peasants are as hardworking a people as can be found anywhere, and they perform their work on fare which not even the low Italians would find sufficient.

During the warm hours the amo remained at home. A couple of parasites kept him company, smiled at his jokes, and feasted on his sententious wisdom. While I was staying there Gregorio made himself a pair of shoes, and his friends, enjoying the rare opportunity, sat and watched admiringly the progress of the work. The fact that Gregorio was doing something became known.

in the neighborhood, and other idlers would come and join the circle from time to time and marvel how the worthy man did his work so well. Were it not for these happenings the posada would have been as quiet as the town.

The women-folk, mother and two daughters, were left strictly alone. The old, wrinkled ama had charge of the cooking, the ingredients for which were given to her by her husband after a good deal of noisy bickering, he claiming that she did not make the best of what he gave, she that he never gave her enough. The daughters, modest girls of pleasing looks, were working all the time, helping in the kitchen, keeping the three guest-rooms in order, fetching water from the well, sprinkling the premises, or sewing. 'Twas all work and no play with them unless, once in a while, they indulged in quiet games with cats and puppies when no one was looking.

Upon this dull background of the posada life there defiled day and night all sorts of types of muleteers-fantastic fellows, wild-looking as the wild beasts, who strode in and out silently with hardly a glance at anyone. After taking care of their mules they would sit in a corner and eat the hard bread and bit of cheese they had brought with them, or lie down to sleep anywhere on the bare soil, with no covering over

The Prison.

them and but a convenient stone for a pillow.

The amo's return at sunset was the signal for supper. Gregorio's was a well-to-do family, having meat once a day every day during the harvest-time. In ordinary times, of course, they had it but once a week. That meat was always served in a sort of soup. The girls, with flowered kerchiefs around their necks, the men in shirt-sleeves with red turban-like rags on their heads, barefooted all, dipped their wooden spoons democratically in the same bowl. There was no attempt at conversation, only at times the shrill voice of the ama would tell some laborer to go slow, that he was eating more than his portion. The hanger-on before mentioned would sit against a pillar, his old frame bent on his staff, and, keeping his keen, knowing eyes looking steadfastly away from the table, appear perfectly indifferent to what was going on. The dogs of the house had more rights than he had, poor chap. Toward the middle of the dinner Gregorio would ask him to join the circle, whereupon the ama, venting her displeasure, would make chilling remarks such as "the door of the posada was as wide open as the gates of the city," to which the gentlemanly fellow would answer, mildly," Yes, Señora, and I hope many good things may come in at it besides dust."

Such was the routine of the days at

Curiosity.

To post his niece at an upper window.

the posada. I was told that once a month, on market-day, all was bustle and movement, and that a dance was sometimes indulged in; but Sundays were days like the others, except that the men improved the chance of making coarse remarks about the women going to church. There is mighty little religion and a great deal of superstition among these Argamasilla folk. The going to church is the one diversion in the terribly monotonous, hard life of the women; but the men prefer to sit or stand around the square, or on a friendly doorstep, and in the same breath indulge in sneers at the priest and the Church and professions of loyalty to "Our Lady."

The chief glory of Argamasilla is the Casa de Medrano, a solid stone house, standing probably in the same condition, but for the decay of age, as when Cervantes was kept a prisoner in its cellar. There is little doubt that this is the very place where the design of the book, which was "engendered in a prison" (see prologue to the first part of Don Quixote)

was first moulded. Some twenty-five feet by eight, and seven feet high, with a mere hole for window, this unhealthy cell is so dark that when the original door, still partly standing, with its iron clamps and nails, is closed, it precludes the possibility of Cervantes having been able to write in it. But to

His favorite chair in the barber-shop.

say this would be to the Argamasillans a personal insult.

The villages of New Castile fight fiercely for the honor of having given birth to Cervantes or to his hero. There are local traditions used and in

vented to prove by long foolish dissertations, many of them in book form, that Cervantes and Quixote did all sorts of things in each of the villages. At a low computation, taking into account only the most persistent claimants, Cervantes was born in six different places. Yet he lived unappreciated and in misery. And his master-piece, which has become the property of mankind, and of whose three hundred editions more than half are other than Spanish, was for more than a century and a half only a sort of a chap-book for the million. In Spain particularly it was regarded as scarcely deserving

of attention by men of letters. The recognition of its worth first came from England. "Spain may have begotten the child, but England was its fostermother" (H. W. Watts). The Spaniards have since scrambled frantically to do tardy justice to the "Prince of the Spanish Geniuses." Thus a tribute has been paid in this very spot by one of its children. In this same Casa de Medrano, some thirty years ago, Rivadeneyra established a printing-office for the sole purpose of issuing two beautiful editions of Don Quixote, and an Infanta pulled from the press the first sheets of the large edition.

The extraordinary interest manifested in Cervantes now points to a national honor which each village tries to monopolize. In this country of contrasts, where the differences of climate and surroundings have made the peninsula a land of well-defined provinces, with

distinct habits and costumes evolved from the conditions of each separate milieu, patriotism is sectional. "I am not a Spaniard, I am a Catalan," expresses the general attitude. But here, in La Mancha, villages are up in arms against other villages, simply on ac

count of Cervantes. It is proved that Miguel de Cervantes was born in Alcala del Henares, a town of New Castile east of Madrid, and that in Argamasilla the "meagre, shrivelled. whimsical" child of his genius was conceived. There are also strong probabilities of truth in the local claim that the original of Don Quixote was Don Pacheco, a royal collector of taxes, the one hidalgo of Argamasilla at the time of Cervantes's appearance in the town. It was by the authority of Pacheco that Cervantes was imprisoned in the cellar of the Casa de Medrano, and Pacheco's house, lately destroyed, corresponded in its main points with the description in the

On market day.

book. In an old painting, which is preserved in the parish church, he and his niece are kneeling before the Virgin thanking her for her assistance, as set forth in the quaint description at the bottom of the picture:

"Our Lady appeared to Don Rodrigo de Pacheco on the eve of St. Matthew, in the year 1601, and cured him-who had promised her a lamp of silver, and called day and night upon her in his great affliction-of a great pain he had in his brain through a chilliness which had fallen into it."

The good priest, Cervantist by birth and choice, who had accompanied me to the church, and who was pleased at my interest in the picture, diplomatically disguising the object of his argument under flowers of Castilian rhetoric, tried to make me agree with him and the Argamasillans. I was not conscious that I failed to realize that there was Don Quixote in flesh and blood. The high cheek-bones and wandering eyes seemed Don Quixote enough, though the sensual full lower lip hardly so. But later on I became convinced that my enthusiasm was not freely enough displayed to reassure my new acquaintance, for he stuck to me during my stay in Argamasilla, going so far as to