The Royal Inland Road: The Spanish Epic Legacy in America

The Royal Inland Road or Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is one of the many roads built in America by Spain between the 16th and 19th centuries.

At the moment of maximum expansion, the Spanish territories included almost three quarters of the current United States, all of current Mexico and the west coast of Canada.

The US states of California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Alaska were part of the Spanish Empire.

The same happened with the southwestern part of British Columbia of present-day Canada were in the hands of Spain within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In Alaska, the occupation was limited to a few trading posts that would later be abandoned.

Historical-geographical map that shows in great detail the history, protagonists and limits of what became the Spanish possessions in the territories of present-day Canada, USA, Mexico and Central America -the American part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain Wikimedia Commons.

For decades, the Spanish legacy penetrated the territories that are now part of the United States through what were called Caminos Reales (Royal Roads). Originally these roads linked two capitals, but over time most of the routes that linked towns of certain importance came to use this meaning. Recently these trails have been recognized as heritage of American history and are now part of the US National Park Service. In fact, five of them are among its 19 National Historic Trails.

The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was the most important of the Caminos Reales and linked Mexico City and Santa Fe in New Mexico. In fact it ended northern Santa Fe at nowadays Ohkay Owingeh (known by its Spanish name as San Juan de los Caballeros from 1589 to 2005, is a pueblo and census-designated place (CDP) in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico).

In its 2560 kilometers (1600 miles) of route it crossed the cities of Ciudad Juárez, El Paso and Albuquerque. It was popularly known as “Camino de Santa Fe” and also as “Camino de la Plata” since the entire route gave access to multiple mining areas and cities in New Spain producing silver and other minerals, such as Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, Fresnillo or Chihuahua.

The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010.

Luis Laorden Jiménez, in his article Los caminos españoles en el oeste americano que son «National Historic Trails» de Estados Unidos says: “the road was long and dangerous. In 1638 it took six months to make the entire trip between Mexico City and Santa Fe without special incidents. By the beginning of the 19th century this time had been reduced somewhat, three months to go from Mexico City to Chihuahua and a month and a half from Chihuahua to Santa Fe”.

After Tenochtitlan was conquered by Hernán Cortés and his allies in 1521, Spanish conquistadors began a series of expeditions with the purpose of expanding their domains.

In April 1598, a group of military scouts led by Juan de Oñate, the newly appointed governor of the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México,  arrived at El Paso del Norte just south of present-day El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, where they celebrated the catholic feast of the Ascension on April 30, before crossing the river with the help of local Indians.

They then mapped and extended the route to what is now Española, where Oñate would establish the capital of the new province. This trail became the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro or Royal Inland Road (RIR), the northernmost of the four main “royal roads” – the Caminos Reales – that linked Mexico City to its major tributaries in Acapulco, Veracruz, Audiencia (Guatemala) and Santa Fe.

map Royal Inland Road by Alexander Humboldt
Map of Camino Real, by Alexander Humboldt, from La Herencia Española en los Estados Unidos de América.

The RIR started at Ciudad de Mexico, capital of New Spain, and went through important cities like Querétaro, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Durango and Chihuahua. And from here through Ciudad Juárez and El Paso in Texas, and Las Cruces and Albuquerque in New Mexico, before reaching Santa Fe.

Therefore, the RIR can be divide in two parts: from Mexico City to Chihuahua, and from Chihuahua to Santa Fe-Ohkay Owingeh. Part one of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is identified as beginning at the Plaza Santo Domingo, very close to the present Zócalo and Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, and goes north to Valle de Allende, Chihuahua.

The second part of the RIR began at the Plaza de Armas of the town of San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua, today’s city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, in front of the great baroque cathedral of San Francisco and the palace of the Spanish governor.

Leaving the city of Chihuahua behind, the road to the north crosses the Chihuahua desert, interrupted by the small but historic Sacramento river, and other streams that go to the lagoons of Encinillas, Patos, Santa Maria and Guzman. The inclement dune field of Samalayuca is there. Through Chihuahua passes the continental watershed and there are rivers that go to the Gulf of Mexico in the Atlantic and others to the Pacific, and there is also the peculiarity of the interior slopes made up of closed basins that end in closed lagoons in the desert.

After passing the Chihuahua desert, the Rio Grande river is reached and the famous crossing point where Juan de Oñate celebrated the first Thanksgiving Mass with the settlers who accompanied him in present-day U.S. territory on April 30, 1598, where Ciudad Juárez is now located, which was formerly called El Paso del Norte, in the State of Mexico, and on the other side of the river is the new city of El Paso at the end of the 19th century in the United States, which historically should have belonged to the State of New Mexico, but because of the railroad and for reasons of greater power, it belongs to the State of Texas. In El Paso del Norte was the Guadalupe Mission where the troubled Spanish survivors fled when they had to abandon Santa Fe and the towns of New Mexico because of the Pueblo Indian rebellion in 1680.

After the Pueblo Revolt, the Spanish Crown decided not to abandon the province altogether but instead maintained a channel to the province so as not to completely abandon their subjects remaining there. The Viceroyalty organized a system, the so-called conducta, to supply the missions, presidios, and northern ranchos. The conducta consisted of wagon caravans that in the beginning departed only every three or four years from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Later the expeditions were annual. Normally there were 32 wagons organized in 4 groups of 8, which when they could go in parallel rows, and in the first one the Spanish flag always flew. Everything was carried in the wagons and it was important that there were operators with spare parts to repair the frequent breakages of the axles and wheels. In each day it was usual to travel three to five leagues. The trip required a long and difficult journey of six months, including 2–3 weeks of rest along the way.

Many were the uncertainties that the conducta and other travelers faced. River floods could force weeks of waiting on the banks until the caravan could wade across. At other times, prolonged droughts in the area could make water scarce and difficult to find.

Beyond the sustenance needs, the greatest danger to the caravan was that of local assaults. Groups of bandits roamed throughout the territory and threatened the caravan from the current state of Mexico to the state of Querétaro, seeking articles of value. And from the southern part of Zacatecas onward to the north, the greatest threat was the native Chichimecas, who became more likely to attack as the caravan progressed further north. The main objective of the Chichimecas was horses, but they would also often take women and children. A series of presidios along the way allowed for relays of troops to provide additional protection to the caravans. At night in the most dangerous areas, the caravans would form a circle with their wagons with the people and animals inside.

The northern part of the Royal Inland Road (RIR) goes from the crossing of the Rio Grande, current border between Mexico and the United States (actual cities of El Paso on the U.S. side and Ciudad Juarez, former Paso del Norte on the Mexican side) to Santa Fe, capital of the State of New Mexico.

The engineering works for the irrigation ditch and to be able to cross the river were important. El Paso del Norte was an important city in Spanish times. At the end of the XVII century it had a population of about 1,000 people, in 1760 it was about 4,000 and in 1800 it reached almost 7,000. The distinguished scientific traveler Alexander Von Humboldt in his 1808 work Ensayo político sobre el Reino de la Nueva España (Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain) makes reference to the good aspect of El Paso del Norte:

“At El Paso del Norte the travelers stop to provide themselves with the necessary provisions before continuing their journey to Santa Fe. The surroundings of El Paso constitute a delightful country, resembling the most beautiful sites of Andalusia. The fields are sown with corn and wheat; the vineyards produce excellent generous wines, which are preferred even to those of Parral in Nueva Vizcaya; the orchards abound with all the fruit trees of Europe, such as fig, peach, apple, and pear trees: as the country is very dry, an acequia conducts to the Paso the waters of the river of the North. The inhabitants of the presidio have a lot of work to do to maintain the dam that leads to the irrigation ditch the waters of the rivers, when they are very low. During the great floods of the Rio del Norte, in the months of May and June, the force of the current destroys this dam almost every year, and the way of restoring and reinforcing it is very ingenious: the inhabitants form baskets with stakes woven with tree branches, fill them with earth and stones and lower them in the middle of the current, which in its eddy leaves them in the place where the ditch separates from the river…”

After fording the Rio Grande the RIR followed its eastern bank for about six leagues and then parted from the river, forming a short cut like the rope that tightens the arc of the riverbed until it met the river again about sixty miles to the north after crossing the desert which was called the Jornada del Muerto (The Working Day of the Dead), because of the terrible lack of water. It goes from Las Cruces to Socorro, New Mexico. This particularly dry 100-mile (160 km) stretch was the most famous and also the most dangerous in New Mexico, where many hikers perished from thirst or heat.

The RIR continues for fifty leagues along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande passing through the Indian villages that were visited by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540-42. The first town after the “Jornada del muerto” is today called Socorro, which was the name Juan de Oñate gave to the village where he found friendly Indians who gave him water and food and thanks to whom the expeditionaries survived. Before reaching Socorro is the headquarters of the El camino Real International Heritage center installed in an excellent museum dedicated to the RIR inaugurated on November 19, 2005.

Past Socorro all the names are Spanish: Escondida, Magdalena, San Acacia, Alamillo, Contreras, las Nutrias, Veguita, Adelino, Valencia, Isleta, Sandía Albuquerque…

In Albuquerque the road leaves the proximity of the Rio Grande and begins the ascent to Santa Fe at the foot of the southern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which have the special name of the “Sangre de Cristo”. The names continue to be Spanish: Alameda, Corrales, Placitas, Algodones, Cerrillos, Peña Blanca, Agua Fria and finally Santa Fe. Before arriving to Santa Fe is the “Rancho de las Golondrinas” which is an old Spanish hacienda converted into a living museum where several days a year the life of the Spanish era is recreated under the auspices of the Historical Foundation of Colonial New Mexico.

In addition to geographical hazards, the greatest danger came from the hostile Indians, especially the Apaches. In 1705, the newly appointed governor of New Mexico, Francisco de Cuervo y Valdés, on his journey from Mexico City to Santa Fe to take office, had to stop at El Paso del Norte despite having a military escort because he found the road overrun by Apaches. To protect the road between Chihuahua and El Paso del Norte, three presidios were founded, the first at Nuestra Señora del Pilar and San José del Paso del Norte at the ford of Rio Grande in 1682, the second at El Carrizal in 1758 and the third at San Elizario in 1774. The Indian threat was to continue during the time when this territory passed to the United States.

The RIR was actively used as a commercial route for more than 300 years, from the middle of the 16th century to the 19th century. During this time, the road was continuously improved, and over time the risks became smaller as haciendas and population centers emerged.

It is interesting to note that progress on these roads did not come from the improvement of infrastructure, which was impossible to meet due to the remoteness and isolation of the distances, but from the use of the most appropriate means of transportation in each case. On the route between Mexico City and Chihuahua, where the most important merchandise to be transported was silver and mercury for working the ore, and heavy metallic elements, wagons pulled by oxen or mules were preferred. Between Chihuahua and Santa Fe, for lighter goods, mule carts were preferred, as they were better adapted to the shortcuts in the road and were faster because they passed where the wagons could not. All this hustle and bustle on the RIR was left for history when the U.S. Santa Fe Railroad reached El Paso in 1881 and continued with another railroad on the Mexican side.

In South America, the main routes also communicated both the two oceanic slopes with each other, as well as the Caribbean Sea with the territories of the South:

  • The Royal Road from Lima to Caracas, passing through Quito and Santa Fe de Bogotá, crossing the Ecuadorian Andes (3,000 km)
  • The Royal Road Santa Fe de Bogota to Honda, a town in the Tolima department of Colombia, through the Cordillera Central to the Magdalena River (Honda) to connect by river to Cartagena de Indias
  • The Royal Road of Muleteers between Caracas and the port of La Guaira, Venezuela
  • The Royal Road to Upper Peru
  • The Royal Road from Lima to Buenos Aires or Upper Peru via Cordoba (3,000 km)
  • The Royal Road to the West, between Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile, passing through San Luis and Mendoza
  • The Royal Road to Asuncion, between Buenos Aires and Asuncion, passing through Corrientes
  • The Royal Road to Chile between Valdivia, Osorno and Chiloé

Credits: Parts of this article are based on a translation from Los caminos españoles en el oeste americano que son «National Historic Trails» de Estados Unidos, by Luis Laorden Jiménez, Mar Océana 31 p.127-166, Los caminos reales: las huellas de España en Norteamérica by Fran Hurtado and from Caminos españoles en Estados Unidos by Borja Cardelús.


Bibliography related to the Spanish legacy in America:

  1. El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro https://archive.org/details/elcaminorealdeti2937palm/page/n11/mode/2up
  2. The journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca https://archive.org/details/journeyofalvarnu00nune/page/n25/mode/2up
  3. Writings of Fray Junipero Serrahttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3929749&view=1up&seq=427&skin=2021
  4. Loomis, Noel M. and Nasatir, Abraham P., Pedro Vial and the Roads to Santa Fe, 1967
  5. Goodwin, Robert, América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493–1898, 2019
  6. Gibson, Carrie, El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America, 2022

 

Lady Cornelia, by Miguel de Cervantes (1613)

The portrait of the Spanish national character, in the context of the interrelations between Spaniards and foreigners in Europe, is presented by Cervantes in an exemplary novel set in Italy at some undetermined date in the last quarter of the 16th century:  Lady Cornelia. In this short novel, there are most abundant considerations about their way of being, approached from a moral perspective as a catalog of virtues and vices.

In this magnificent novel the way of being attributed to the Spaniards plays a key role in the development of the plot. The true protagonist of the story we are told is Cornelia, a young Bolognese girl, beautiful, of noble lineage and orphan of father and mother; but two Spanish gentlemen, of Biscayan origin and friends, Don Juan de Gamboa and Don Antonio de Isunza, who abandon their studies in Salamanca to go to Flanders, also play a very important role, but, things being peaceful here, they decide to undertake a journey through Italy, after which they settle in Bologna to continue their studies in the famous College of the Spaniards of the University of Bologna. Shortly after the novel begins, the narrator portrays the two young Spanish noblemen as well-bred, gentle, discreet, courageous, restrained and liberal men. They are the prototype of the Spanish gentleman. Well, the Italians with whom they interact do not limit themselves to agreeing with the narrator in this portrait of them, but go a step further and elevate it to the category of a portrait of the Spaniards in general or of the common Spaniards.

As if this were not enough, the two young Spanish gentlemen are free of a vice commonly attributed in Italy to Spaniards: that of arrogance or haughtiness. The author tells us that the two gentlemen friends led an intense social life in the university environment of Bologna, for they made many friends, not only among the Spanish students, but also among the Bolognese and foreigners.

Arrogance, however, plays no role in La señora Cornelia, precisely because the two Biscayan gentlemen, aware of the reputation that Spaniards have in Italy as arrogant, make every effort not to do anything that could be interpreted by their friends, acquaintances and other Italians with whom they have dealings as a sign of arrogance. Therefore, apart from this mention of this vice as typical of the Spaniards, there is no place in this novel for their defects, but only for their virtues, which play a key role in the development and happy outcome of Cornelia’s story. For it is the virtues of both gentlemen that lead them to become fully engaged in Cornelia’s story, which involves, apart from her and her newborn son, her beloved the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este, and his brother Lorenzo, who mistakenly believes that his sister has been deceived and dishonored by the Duke and for which he hopes that the latter will give him satisfaction, either by marrying his sister or by fighting a duel with him.

It is Don Juan’s good qualities, especially his courage and generosity, that lead him to become involved in the story when, at the beginning of the narrative, he comes to the defense of the Duke, without knowing who he is, after seeing him attacked in an unequal manner by a group of six swordsmen, among whom is Don Lorenzo. Risking his life, he bravely enters the fight and saves the Duke’s life. This fact will contribute to make Don Juan an advocate and mediator between the Duke and Don Lorenzo. But it is not the nobleman of Ferrara who, although he is aware of Don Juan’s virtues, who interprets them as the virtues of this gentleman as a Spaniard. This role corresponds to Cornelia and her brother Lorenzo.

Unlike Don Juan, who enters the story of sickle and sickle on his own initiative, Don Antonio is drawn into it at the request of Cornelia, who, distressed and unhappy at having failed in her encounter with the Duke and fearing that her brother will commit some folly, thinking that the Duke has dishonored her and even that he will attempt against herself, she comes across Don Antonio, whom, after learning that he is a Spaniard, she appeals to his condition as such and to a virtue that she considers a national characteristic of Spaniards, courtesy, to obtain his protection.

Well, it is to this generous courtesy that Cornelia appeals to Don Antonio to help her remedy her ills. And Don Antonio, honoring his Spanish courtesy, one of whose main requirements is precisely to protect the ladies, immediately puts himself at the disposal of the Bolognese lady and takes her to the inn where the two Spanish gentlemen are staying during their stay in Bologna. There Cornelia will also meet Don Juan, from whom she will learn, thanks to the Duke’s hat that he is wearing after having given it to her as a trophy after the fight, that he knows the Duke, which causes the lady’s uneasiness, fearful that something bad might have happened to her beloved. However, she is somewhat reassured to know that he is in good hands, in the power of “gentle Spanish men”, otherwise the fear of losing his honesty would take his life. Again it is Spanish courtesy, for nothing else is gentleness, that offers security to the Italian lady.

Noting Cornelia’s signs of despondency and anxiety, notwithstanding her confession of trusting in Spanish gentleness, Don Juan, who speaks also for his friend, is obliged to reassure her with a few words in which he, after offering to serve her without hesitating to risk his life to defend and protect her, we are given a few hints about the moral character of the Spaniards, now seen from the perspective of a Spanish gentleman, who echoes, however, what Cornelia thinks of the goodness of the Spaniards

Cornelia supposes that the Spaniards are usually kind, which here is equivalent to generous. Don Juan, on behalf of himself and his friend, put themselves at the service of the lady to defend and protect her, but in saying of themselves that they, as Spaniards, are supposed to be good, he considers that this could be misinterpreted and understood to have crossed the limits of what a discreet and restrained gentleman should say and thus to have incurred in that arrogance attributed to the Spaniards in Italy from which they have so far tried to dissociate themselves. A gentleman must be humble and not speak of his virtues, for, as Don Quixote says, the praise of himself debases, although he himself does not apply this rule; it must be others who speak of them. For this reason, after presenting themselves as good before Cornelia, Don Juan hastens to clarify the matter by declaring that, although what he has said could be understood as arrogant on his part, in this case it is justified because the recognition of being good and principal is simply with the intention of reassuring a lady in distress and despondent, assuring her that she is in the hands of those who can be trusted to offer her shelter and protection.

Don Juan’s words have their effect and Cornelia reaffirms her decision to trust in the goodness or liberality of both Spanish gentlemen and tells them her story, in which the essential is that, in love with the Duke of Ferrara, after promising to be his wife, she gives herself to him and the fruit of this is a son, She meets him at the inn, where she was brought by Don Juan, who, on his first night outing through the streets of Bologna, before taking part in the quarrel between the Duke and his attackers, receives a newborn child as he passes through a door, which was not intended for him but for a servant of the Duke. Cornelia and her beloved had agreed that he would pick her up and take her to Ferrara to be publicly married, but she left her house before her suitor arrived and, frightened when she saw her brother’s armed gang, who would be the one to have the quarrel with the duke, and believing that her brother would use his sword against her, she left in panic until she ran into Don Antonio, thus frustrating the encounter with her beloved. But the most interesting thing, for our analysis, is that Cornelia, after having told what we have just summarized, finishes her touching relationship appealing again to the courtesy of the Spaniards, represented by the two Biscayan gentlemen, and in it she is confident to resolve her misfortunes favorably.

We have seen how the Basque gentlemen become fully immersed in the story through their main characters, Cornelia and the Duke of Ferrara. Well, also through a third important character, Don Lorenzo, Cornelia’s brother, they are even more immersed in the story, especially Don Juan. And the involvement of the latter through Don Lorenzo will allow the introduction of one more feature of the Spanish national character. If Cornelia’s lifeline is Spanish courtesy, her brother’s is Spanish courage. Indeed, Lorenzo, feeling aggrieved because he wrongly believes that the Duke has deceived and dishonored his sister, appears at the inn looking for Don Juan, whose help he requests to obtain from the Duke a satisfaction for his offense (that is, to accept to marry his sister) or, if he refuses, to arrange a duel, through which he has the opportunity to avenge the offense and defend his honor. And for this she needs the support of Don Juan, that he be her defender and mediator before the Duke, and she finds no better way to get it than asking him in the name of the proven courage of the Spaniards.

Perhaps the exaltation of the courage of the Spaniards with the example of Xerxes’ army is not very fortunate, considering that the Persian king was a loser and was defeated by the Greeks, but the intention is good, since Lorenzo only intends to enhance the courage and strength of the Spaniards. It is also interesting to note that Lorenzo’s request to Don Juan not only extols courage as a Spanish national trait, but also generosity. For in order to do what Lorenzo requests, although he requests it because of the confidence he has in the bravery of the Spaniards, it is not enough that the person requested be brave; it is also necessary that he be generously willing to help him by putting his courage at his service. Therefore, aware of this, and after accepting Don Juan’s request for Lorenzo’s help “because he is a Spaniard and a gentleman”, the Italian nobleman gratefully gives the Spaniard a hug and expressly acknowledges the latter’s generosity.

Don Juan will keep his word. He will meet with the Duke, who will confess that he has not deceived Cornelia, that he accepts her as his legitimate wife and also the child as his son, and that if so far he has not publicly married her it is because his mother wants to marry him to the daughter of the Duke of Mantua, but that, as soon as his mother dies, whose end seems imminent, he will marry her, which indeed will happen. So a story that seemed to dramatize a conflict of dishonor, of unfulfilled word, and of the consequent grievance, in the end harbors no more conflict than the postponement of the marriage until the opposition of the Duke’s mother ceases with her death. But the channelling of the story and its happy outcome has only been possible thanks to the intervention of two Spanish gentlemen who have acted as representatives of the best virtues attributed to the Spanish national character; two Biscayan gentlemen have been the best ambassadors or exponents of the Spanish genius in Italy.

Read it online in English below. In Spanish at this link.

Lady Cornelia

From The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes. Translated from the Spanish by Walter K. Kelly in 1881.

Don Antonio de Isunza and Don Juan de Gamboa, gentlemen of high birth and excellent sense, both of the same age, and very intimate friends, being students together at Salamanca, determined to abandon their studies and proceed to Flanders. To this resolution they were incited by the fervour of youth, their desire to see the world, and their conviction that the profession of arms, so becoming to all, is more particularly suitable to men of illustrious race.

But they did not reach Flanders until peace was restored, or at least on the point of being concluded; and at Antwerp they received letters from their parents, wherein the latter expressed the great displeasure caused them by their sons having left their studies without informing them of their intention, which if they had done, the proper measures might have been taken for their making the journey in a manner befitting their birth and station.

Unwilling to give further dissatisfaction to their parents, the young men resolved to return to Spain, the rather as there was now nothing to be done in Flanders. But before doing so they determined to visit all the most renowned cities of Italy; and having seen the greater part of them, they were so much attracted by the noble university of Bologna, that they resolved to remain there and complete the studies abandoned at Salamanca.

They imparted their intentions to their parents, who testified their entire approbation by the magnificence with which they provided their sons with every thing proper to their rank, to the end that, in their manner of living, they might show who they were, and of what house they were born. From the first day, therefore, that the young men visited the schools, all perceived them to be gallant, sensible, and well-bred gentlemen.

Don Antonio was at this time in his twenty-fourth year, and Don Juan had not passed his twenty-sixth. This fair period of life they adorned by various good qualities; they were handsome, brave, of good address, and well versed in music and poetry; in a word, they were endowed with such advantages as caused them to be much sought and greatly beloved by all who knew them. They soon had numerous friends, not only among the many Spaniards belonging to the university,[1]Cardinal Albornoz founded a college in the University of Bologna, expressly for the Spaniards, his countrymen.  but also among people of the city, and of other nations, to all of whom they proved themselves courteous, liberal, and wholly free from that arrogance which is said to be too often exhibited by Spaniards.

Being young, and of joyous temperament, Don Juan and Don Antonio did not fail to give their attention to the beauties of the city. Many there were indeed in Bologna, both married and unmarried, remarkable as well for their virtues as their charms; but among them all there was none who surpassed the Signora Cornelia Bentivoglia, of that old and illustrious family of the Bentivogli, who were at one time lords of Bologna.

Cornelia was beautiful to a marvel; she had been left under the guardianship of her brother Lorenzo Bentivoglio, a brave and honourable gentleman. They were orphans, but inheritors of considerable wealth–and wealth is a great alleviation of the evils of the orphan state. Cornelia lived in complete seclusion, and her brother guarded her with unwearied solicitude. The lady neither showed herself on any occasion, nor would her brother consent that any one should see her; but this very fact inspired Don Juan and Don Antonio with the most lively desire to behold her face, were it only at church. Yet all the pains they took for that purpose proved vain, and the wishes they had felt on the subject gradually diminished, as the attempt appeared more and more hopeless. Thus, devoted to their studies, and varying these with such amusements as are permitted to their age, the young men passed a life as cheerful as it was honourable, rarely going out at night, but when they did so, it was always together and well armed.

One evening, however, when Don Juan was preparing to go out, Don Antonio expressed his desire to remain at home for a short time, to repeat certain orisons: but he requested Don Juan to go without him, and promised to follow him.

“Why should I go out to wait for you?” said Don Juan. “I will stay; if you do not go out at all to-night, it will be of very little consequence.” “By no means shall you stay,” returned Don Antonio: “go and take the air; I will be with you almost immediately, if you take the usual way.”

“Well, do as you please,” said Don Juan: “if you come you will find me on our usual beat.” With these words Don Juan left the house.

The night was dark, and the hour about eleven. Don Juan passed through two or three streets, but finding himself alone, and with no one to speak to, he determined to return home. He began to retrace his steps accordingly; and was passing through a street, the houses of which had marble porticoes, when he heard some one call out, “Hist! hist!” from one of the doors. The darkness of the night, and the shadow cast by the colonnade, did not permit him to see the whisperer; but he stopped at once, and listened attentively. He saw a door partially opened, approached it, and heard these words uttered in a low voice, “Is it you, Fabio?” Don Juan, on the spur of the moment, replied, “Yes!” “Take it, then,” returned the voice, “take it, and place it in security; but return instantly, for the matter presses.” Don Juan put out his hand in the dark, and encountered a packet. Proceeding to take hold of it, he found that it required both hands; instinctively he extended the second, but had scarcely done so before the portal was closed, and he found himself again alone in the street, loaded with, he knew not what.

Presently the cry of an infant, and, as it seemed, but newly born, smote his ears, filling him with confusion and amazement, for he knew not what next to do, or how to proceed in so strange a case. If he knocked at the door he was almost certain to endanger the mother of the infant; and if he left his burthen there, he must imperil the life of the babe itself. But if he took it home he should as little know what to do with it, nor was he acquainted with any one in the city to whom he could entrust the care of the child; yet remembering that he had been required to come back quickly, after placing his charge in safety, he determined to take the infant home, leave it in the hands of his old housekeeper, and return to see if his aid was needed in any way, since he perceived clearly that the person who had been expected to come for the child had not arrived, and the latter had been given to himself in mistake. With this determination, Don Juan soon reached his home; but found that Antonio had already left it. He then went to his chamber, and calling the housekeeper, uncovered the infant, which was one of the most beautiful ever seen; whilst, as the good woman remarked, the elegance of the clothes in which the little creature was wrapped, proved him–for it was a boy–to be the son of rich parents.

“You must, now,” said Don Juan to his housekeeper, “find some one to nurse this infant; but first of all take away these rich coverings, and put on him others of the plainest kind. Having done that, you must carry the babe, without a moment’s delay, to the house of a midwife, for there it is that you will be most likely to find all that is requisite in such a case. Take money to pay what may be needful, and give the child such parents as you please, for I desire to hide the truth, and not let the manner in which I became possessed of it be known.” The woman promised that she would obey him in every point; and Don Juan returned in all haste to the street, to see whether he should receive another mysterious call. But just before he arrived at the house whence the infant had been delivered to him, the clash of swords struck his ear, the sound being as that of several persons engaged in strife. He listened carefully, but could hear no word; the combat was carried on in total silence; but the sparks cast up by the swords as they struck against the stones, enabled him to perceive that one man was defending himself against several assailants; and he was confirmed in this belief by an exclamation which proceeded at length from the last person attacked. “Ah, traitors! you are many and I am but one, yet your baseness shall not avail you.”

Hearing and seeing this, Don Juan, listening only to the impulses of his brave heart, sprang to the side of the person assailed, and opposing the buckler he carried on his arm to the swords of the adversaries, drew his own, and speaking in Italian that he might not be known as a Spaniard, he said–“Fear not, Signor, help has arrived that will not fail you while life holds; lay on well, for traitors are worth but little however many there may be.” To this, one of the assailants made answer–“You lie; there are no traitors here. He who seeks to recover his lost honour is no traitor, and is permitted to avail himself of every advantage.”

No more was said on either side, for the impetuosity of the assailants, who, as Don Juan thought, amounted to not less than six, left no opportunity for further words. They pressed his companion, meanwhile, very closely; and two of them giving him each a thrust at the same time with the point of their swords, he fell to the earth. Don Juan believed they had killed him; he threw himself upon the adversaries, nevertheless, and with a shower of cuts and thrusts, dealt with extraordinary rapidity, caused them to give way for several paces. But all his efforts must needs have been vain for the defence of the fallen man, had not Fortune aided him, by making the neighbours come with lights to their windows and shout for the watch, whereupon the assailants ran off and left the street clear.

The fallen man was meanwhile beginning to move; for the strokes he had received, having encountered a breastplate as hard as adamant, had only stunned, but not wounded him.

Now, Don Juan’s hat had been knocked off in the fray, and thinking he had picked it up, he had in fact put on that of another person, without perceiving it to be other than his own. The gentleman whom he had assisted now approached Don Juan, and accosted him as follows:–“Signor Cavalier, whoever you may be, I confess that I owe you my life, and I am bound to employ it, with all I have or can command, in your service: do me the favour to tell me who you are, that I may know to whom my gratitude is due.”

“Signor,” replied Don Juan, “that I may not seem discourteous, and in compliance with your request, although I am wholly disinterested in what I have done, you shall know that I am a Spanish gentleman, and a student in this city; if you desire to hear my name I will tell you, rather lest you should have some future occasion for my services than for any other motive, that I am called Don Juan de Gamboa.”

“You have done me a singular service, Signor Don Juan de Gamboa,” replied the gentleman who had fallen, “but I will not tell you who I am, nor my name, which I desire that you should learn from others rather than from myself; yet I will take care that you be soon informed respecting these things.”

Don Juan then inquired of the stranger if he were wounded, observing, that he had seen him receive two furious lunges in the breast; but the other replied that he was unhurt; adding, that next to God, a famous plastron that he wore had defended him against the blows he had received, though his enemies would certainly have finished him had Don Juan not come to his aid.

While thus discoursing, they beheld a body of men advancing towards them; and Don Juan exclaimed–“If these are enemies, Signor, let us hasten to put ourselves on our guard, and use our hands as men of our condition should do.”

“They are not enemies, so far as I can judge,” replied the stranger. “The men who are now coming towards us are friends.”

And this was the truth; the persons approaching, of whom there were eight, surrounded the unknown cavalier, with whom they exchanged a few words, but in so low a tone that Don Juan could not hear the purport. The gentleman then turned to Don Juan and said–“If these friends had not arrived I should certainly not have left your company, Signor Don Juan, until you had seen me in some place of safety; but as things are, I beg you now, with all kindness, to retire and leave me in this place, where it is of great importance that I should remain.” Speaking thus, the stranger carried his hand to his head, but finding that he was without a hat, he turned towards the persons who had joined him, desiring them to give him one, and saying that his own had fallen. He had no sooner spoken than Don Juan presented him with that which he had himself just picked up, and which he had discovered to be not his own. The stranger having felt the hat, returned it to Don Juan, saying that it was not his, and adding, “On your life, Signor Don Juan, keep this hat as a trophy of this affray, for I believe it to be one that is not unknown.”

The persons around then gave the stranger another hat, and Don Juan, after exchanging a few brief compliments with his companion, left him, in compliance with his desire, without knowing who he was: he then returned home, not daring at that moment to approach the door whence he had received the newly-born infant, because the whole neighbourhood had been aroused, and was in movement.

Now it chanced that as Don Juan was returning to his abode, he met his comrade Don Antonio de Isunza; and the latter no sooner recognised him in the darkness, than he exclaimed, “Turn about, Don Juan, and walk with me to the end of the street; I have something to tell you, and as we go along will relate a story such as you have never heard before in your life.”

“I also have one of the same kind to tell you,” returned Don Juan, “but let us go up the street as you say, and do you first relate your story.” Don Antonio thereupon walked forward, and began as follows:–“You must know that in little less than an hour after you had left the house, I left it also, to go in search of you, but I had not gone thirty paces from this place when I saw before me a black mass, which I soon perceived to be a person advancing in great haste. As the figure approached nearer, I perceived it to be that of a woman, wrapped in a very wide mantle, and who, in a voice interrupted by sobs and sighs, addressed me thus, ‘Are you, sir, a stranger, or one of the city?’ ‘I am a stranger,’ I replied, ‘and a Spaniard.’ ‘Thanks be to God!’ she exclaimed, ‘he will not have me die without the sacraments.’ ‘Are you then wounded, madam?’ continued I, ‘or attacked by some mortal malady?’ ‘It may well happen that the malady from which I suffer may prove mortal, if I do not soon receive aid,’ returned the lady, ‘wherefore, by the courtesy which is ever found among those of your nation, I entreat you, Signor Spaniard, take me from these streets, and lead me to your dwelling with all the speed you may; there, if you wish it, you shall know the cause of my sufferings, and who I am, even though it should cost me my reputation to make myself known.’

“Hearing this,” continued Don Antonio, “and seeing that the lady was in a strait which permitted no delay, I said nothing more, but offering her my hand, I conducted her by the by-streets to our house. Our page, Santisteban, opened the door, but, commanding him to retire, I led the lady in without permitting him to see her, and took her into my room, where she had no sooner entered than she fell fainting on my bed. Approaching to assist her, I removed the mantle which had hitherto concealed her face, and discovered the most astonishing loveliness that human eyes ever beheld. She may be about eighteen years old, as I should suppose, but rather less than more. Bewildered for a moment at the sight of so much beauty, I remained as one stupified, but recollecting myself, I hastened to throw water on her face, and, with a pitiable sigh, she recovered consciousness.

“The first word she uttered was the question, ‘Do you know me, Signor?’ I replied, ‘No, lady! I have not been so fortunate as ever before to have seen so much beauty.’ ‘Unhappy is she,’ returned the lady, ‘to whom heaven has given it for her misfortune. But, Signor, this is not the time to praise my beauty, but to mourn my distress. By all that you most revere, I entreat you to leave me shut up here, and let no one behold me, while you return in all haste to the place where you found me, and see if there be any persons fighting there. Yet do not take part either with one side or the other. Only separate the combatants, for whatever injury may happen to either, must needs be to the increase of my own misfortunes.’ I then left her as she desired,” continued Don Antonio, “and am now going to put an end to any quarrel which may arise, as the lady has commanded me.”

“Have you anything more to say?” inquired Don Juan.

“Do you think I have not said enough,” answered Don Antonio, “since I have told you that I have now in my chamber, and hold under my key, the most wonderful beauty that human eyes have ever beheld.”

“The adventure is a strange one, without doubt,” replied Don Juan, “but listen to mine;” and he instantly related to his friend all that had happened to him. He told how the newly-born infant was then in their house, and in the care of their housekeeper, with the orders he had given as to changing its rich habits for others less remarkable, and for procuring a nurse from the nearest midwife, to meet the present necessity. “As to the combat you come in quest of,” he added, “that is already ended, and peace is made.” Don Juan further related that he had himself taken part in the strife; and concluded by remarking, that he believed those whom he had found engaged were all persons of high quality, as well as great courage.

Each of the Spaniards was much surprised at the adventure of the other, and they instantly returned to the house to see what the lady shut up there might require. On the way, Don Antonio told Don Juan that he had promised the unknown not to suffer any one to see her; assuring her that he only would enter the room, until she should herself permit the approach of others.

“I shall nevertheless do my best to see her,” replied Don Juan; “after what you have said of her beauty, I cannot but desire to do so, and shall contrive some means for effecting it.”

Saying this they arrived at their house, when one of their three pages, bringing lights, Don Antonio cast his eyes on the hat worn by Don Juan, and perceived that it was glittering with diamonds. Don Juan took it off, and then saw that the lustre of which his companion spoke, proceeded from a very rich band formed of large brilliants. In great surprise, the friends examined the ornament, and concluded that if all the diamonds were as precious as they appeared to be, the hat must be worth more than two thousand ducats. They thus became confirmed in the conviction entertained by Don Juan, that the persons engaged in the combat were of high quality, especially the gentleman whose part he had taken, and who, as he now recollected, when bidding him take the hat, and keep it, had remarked that it was not unknown.

The young men then commanded their pages to retire, and Don Antonio, opening the door of his room, found the lady seated on his bed, leaning her cheek on her hand, and weeping piteously. Don Juan also having approached the door, the splendour of the diamonds caught the eye of the weeping lady, and she exclaimed, “Enter, my lord duke, enter! Why afford me in such scanty measure the happiness of seeing you; enter at once, I beseech you.”

“Signora,” replied Don Antonio, “there is no duke here who is declining to see you.”

“How, no duke!” she exclaimed. “He whom I have just seen is the Duke of Ferrara; the rich decoration of his hat does not permit him to conceal himself.”

“Of a truth, Signora, he who wears the hat you speak of is no duke; and if you please to undeceive yourself by seeing that person, you have but to give your permission, and he shall enter.”

“Let him do so,” said the lady; “although, if he be not the duke, my misfortune will be all the greater.”

Don Juan had heard all this, and now finding that he was invited to enter, he walked into the apartment with his hat in his hand; but he had no sooner placed himself before the lady than she, seeing he was not the person she had supposed, began to exclaim, in a troubled voice and with broken words, “Ah! miserable creature that I am, tell me, Signor–tell me at once, without keeping me in suspense, what do you know of him who owned that sombrero? How is it that he no longer has it, and how did it come into your possession? Does he still live, or is this the token that he sends me of his death? Oh! my beloved, what misery is this! I see the jewels that were thine. I see myself shut up here without the light of thy presence. I am in the power of strangers; and if I did not know that they were Spaniards and gentlemen, the fear of that disgrace by which I am threatened would already have finished my life.”

“Calm yourself, madam,” replied Don Juan, “for the master of this sombrero is not dead, nor are you in a place where any increase to your misfortunes is to be dreaded. We think only of serving you, so far as our means will permit, even to the exposing our lives for your defence and succour. It would ill become us to suffer that the trust you have in the faith of Spaniards should be vain; and since we are Spaniards, and of good quality–for here that assertion, which might otherwise appear arrogant, becomes needful–be assured that you will receive all the respect which is your due.”

“I believe you,” replied the lady; “but, nevertheless, tell me, I pray you, how this rich sombrero came into your possession, and where is its owner? who is no less a personage than Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.”

Then Don Juan, that he might not keep the lady longer in suspense, related to her how he had found the hat in the midst of a combat, in which he had taken the part of a gentleman, who, from what she had said, he could not now doubt to be the Duke of Ferrara. He further told her how, having lost his own hat in the strife, the gentleman had bidden him keep the one he had picked up, and which belonged, as he said, to a person not unknown; that neither the cavalier nor himself had received any wound; and that, finally, certain friends or servants of the former had arrived, when he who was now believed to be the duke had requested Don Juan to leave him in that place, where he desired for certain reasons to remain.

“This, madam,” concluded Don Juan, “is the whole history of the manner in which the hat came into my possession; and for its master, whom you suppose to be the Duke of Ferrara, it is not an hour since I left him in perfect safety. Let this true narration suffice to console you, since you are anxious to be assured that the Duke is unhurt.”

To this the lady made answer, “That you, gentlemen, may know how much reason I have to inquire for the duke, and whether I need be anxious for his safety, listen in your turn with attention, and I will relate what I know not yet if I must call my unhappy history.”

While these things were passing, the housekeeper of Don Antonio and Don Juan was occupied with the infant, whose mouth she had moistened with honey, and whose rich habits she was changing for clothes of a very humble character. When that was done, she was about to carry the babe to the house of the midwife, as Don Juan had recommended, but as she was passing with it before the door of the room wherein the lady was about to commence her history, the little creature began to cry aloud, insomuch that the lady heard it. She instantly rose to her feet, and set herself to listen, when the plaints of the infant arrived more distinctly to her ear.

“What child is this, gentlemen?” said she, “for it appears to be but just born.”

Don Juan replied, “It is a little fellow who has been laid at the door of our house to-night, and our servant is about to seek some one who will nurse it.”

“Let them bring it to me, for the love of God!” exclaimed the lady, “for I will offer that charity to the child of others, since it has not pleased Heaven that I should be permitted to nourish my own.”

Don Juan then called the housekeeper, and taking the infant from her arms he placed it in those of the lady, saying, “Behold, madam, this is the present that has been made to us to-night, and it is not the first of the kind that we have received, since but few months pass wherein we do not find such God-sends hooked on to the hinges of our doors.”

The lady had meanwhile taken the infant into her arms, and looked attentively at its face, but remarking the poverty of its clothing, which was, nevertheless, extremely clean, she could not restrain her tears. She cast the kerchief which she had worn around her head over her bosom, that she might succour the infant with decency, and bending her face over that of the child, she remained long without raising her head, while her eyes rained torrents of tears on the little creature she was nursing.

The babe was eager to be fed, but finding that it could not obtain the nourishment it sought, the lady returned the babe to Don Juan, saying, “I have vainly desired to be charitable to this deserted infant, and have but shown that I am new to such matters. Let your servants put a little honey on the lips of the child, but do not suffer them to carry it through the streets at such an hour; bid them wait until the day breaks, and let the babe be once more brought to me before they take it away, for I find a great consolation in the sight of it.”

Don Juan then restored the infant to the housekeeper, bidding her take the best care she could of it until daybreak, commanding that the rich clothes it had first worn should be put on it again, and directing her not to take it from the house until he had seen it once more. That done, he returned to the room; and the two friends being again alone with the beautiful lady, she said, “If you desire that I should relate my story, you must first give me something that may restore my strength, for I feel in much need of it.” Don Antonio flew to the beaufet for some conserves, of which the lady ate a little; and having drunk a glass of water, and feeling somewhat refreshed, she said, “Sit down, Signors, and listen to my story.”

The gentlemen seated themselves accordingly, and she, arranging herself on the bed, and covering her person with the folds of her mantle, suffered the veil which she had kept about her head to fall on her shoulders, thus giving her face to view, and exhibiting in it a lustre equal to that of the moon, rather of the sun itself, when displayed in all its splendour. Liquid pearls fell from her eyes, which she endeavoured to dry with a kerchief of extraordinary delicacy, and with hands so white that he must have had much judgment in colour who could have found a difference between them and the cambric. Finally, after many a sigh and many an effort to calm herself, with a feeble and trembling voice, she said–

“I, Signors, am she of whom you have doubtless heard mention in this city, since, such as it is, there are few tongues that do not publish the fame of my beauty. I am Cornelia Bentivoglio, sister of Lorenzo Bentivoglio; and, in saying this, I have perhaps affirmed two acknowledged truths,–the one my nobility, and the other my beauty. At a very early age I was left an orphan to the care of my brother, who was most sedulous in watching over me, even from my childhood, although he reposed more confidence in my sentiments of honour than in the guards he had placed around me. In short, kept thus between walls and in perfect solitude, having no other company than that of my attendants, I grew to womanhood, and with me grew the reputation of my loveliness, bruited abroad by the servants of my house, and by such as had been admitted to my privacy, as also by a portrait which my brother had caused to be taken by a famous painter, to the end, as he said, that the world might not be wholly deprived of my features, in the event of my being early summoned by Heaven to a better life.

“All this might have ended well, had it not chanced that the Duke of Ferrara consented to act as sponsor at the nuptials of one of my cousins; when my brother permitted me to be present at the ceremony, that we might do the greater honour to our kinswoman. There I saw and was seen; there, as I believe, hearts were subjugated, and the will of the beholders rendered subservient; there I felt the pleasure received from praise, even when bestowed by flattering tongues; and, finally, I there beheld the duke, and was seen by him; in a word, it is in consequence of this meeting that you see me here.

“I will not relate to you, Signors (for that would needlessly protract my story), the various stratagems and contrivances by which the duke and myself, at the end of two years, were at length enabled to bring about that union, our desire for which had received birth at those nuptials. Neither guards, nor seclusion, nor remonstrances, nor human diligence of any kind, sufficed to prevent it, and we were finally made one; for without the sanction due to my honour, Alfonso would certainly not have prevailed. I would fain have had him publicly demand my hand from my brother, who would not have refused it; nor would the duke have had to excuse himself before the world as to any inequality in our marriage, since the race of the Bentivogli is in no manner inferior to that of Este; but the reasons which he gave for not doing as I wished appeared to me sufficient, and I suffered them to prevail.

“The visits of the duke were made through the intervention of a servant, over whom his gifts had more influence than was consistent with the confidence reposed in her by my brother. After a time I perceived that I was about to become a mother, and feigning illness and low spirits, I prevailed on Lorenzo to permit me to visit the cousin at whose marriage it was that I first saw the duke; I then apprised the latter of my situation, letting him also know the danger in which my life was placed from that suspicion of the truth which I could not but fear that Lorenzo must eventually entertain.

“It was then agreed between us, that when the time for my travail drew near, the duke should come, with certain of his friends, and take me to Ferrara, where our marriage should be publicly celebrated. This was the night on which I was to have departed, and I was waiting the arrival of Alfonso, when I heard my brother pass the door with several other persons, all armed, as I could hear, by the noise of their weapons. The terror caused by this event was such as to occasion the premature birth of my infant, a son, whom the waiting-woman, my confidant, who had made all ready for his reception, wrapped at once in the clothes we had provided, and gave at the street-door, as she told me, to a servant of the duke. Soon afterwards, taking such measures as I could under circumstances so pressing, and hastened by the fear of my brother, I also left the house, hoping to find the duke awaiting me in the street. I ought not to have gone forth until he had come to the door; but the armed band of my brother, whose sword I felt at my throat, had caused me such terror that I was not in a state to reflect. Almost out of my senses I came forth, as you behold me; and what has since happened you know. I am here, it is true, without my husband, and without my son; yet I return thanks to Heaven which has led me into your hands–for from you I promise myself all that may be expected from Spanish courtesy, reinforced, as it cannot but be in your persons, by the nobility of your race.”

Having said this, the lady fell back on the bed, and the two friends hastened to her assistance, fearing she had again fainted. But they found this not to be the case; she was only weeping bitterly. Wherefore Don Juan said to her, “If up to the present moment, beautiful lady, my companion Don Antonio, and I, have felt pity and regret for you as being a woman, still more shall we now do so, knowing your quality; since compassion and grief are changed into the positive obligation and duty of serving and aiding you. Take courage, and do not be dismayed; for little as you are formed to endure such trials, so much the more will you prove yourself to be the exalted person you are, as your patience and fortitude enable you to rise above your sorrows. Believe me, Signora, I am persuaded that these extraordinary events are about to have a fortunate conclusion; for Heaven can never permit so much beauty to endure permanent sorrow, nor suffer your chaste purposes to be frustrated. Go now to bed, Signora, and take that care of your health of which you have so much need; there shall presently come to wait on you a servant of ours, in whom you may confide as in ourselves, for she will maintain silence respecting your misfortunes with no less discretion than she will attend to all your necessities.”

“The condition in which I find myself,” replied the lady, “might compel me to the adoption of more difficult measures than those you advise. Let this woman come, Signors; presented to me by you, she cannot fail to be good and serviceable; but I beseech you let no other living being see me.”

“So shall it be,” replied Don Antonio; and the two friends withdrew, leaving Cornelia alone.

Don Juan then commanded the housekeeper to enter the room, taking with her the infant, whose rich habits she had already replaced. The woman did as she was ordered, having been previously told what she should reply to the questions of the Signora respecting the infant she bore in her arms Seeing her come in, Cornelia instantly said, “You come in good time, my friend; give me that infant, and place the light near me.”

The servant obeyed; and, taking the babe in her arms, Cornelia instantly began to tremble, gazed at him intently, and cried out in haste, “Tell me, good woman, is this child the same that you brought me a short time since?” “It is the same, Signora,” replied the woman. “How is it, then, that his clothing is so different? Certainly, dame housekeeper, either these are other wrappings, or the infant is not the same.” “It may all be as you say,” began the old woman. “All as I say!” interrupted Cornelia, “how and what is this? I conjure you, friend, by all you most value, to tell me whence you received these rich clothes; for my heart seems to be bursting in my bosom! Tell me the cause of this change; for you must know that these things belong to me, if my sight do not deceive me, and my memory have not failed. In these robes, or some like them, I entrusted to a servant of mine the treasured jewel of my soul! Who has taken them from him? Ah, miserable creature that I am! who has brought these things here? Oh, unhappy and woeful day!”

Don Juan and Don Antonio, who were listening to all this, could not suffer the matter to go further, nor would they permit the exchange of the infant’s dress to trouble the poor lady any longer. They therefore entered the room, and Don Juan said, “This infant and its wrappings are yours, Signora;” and immediately he related from point to point how the matter had happened. He told Cornelia that he was himself the person to whom the waiting woman had given the child, and how he had brought it home, with the orders he had given to the housekeeper respecting its change of clothes, and his motives for doing so. He added that, from the moment when she had spoken of her own infant, he had felt certain that this was no other than her son; and if he had not told her so at once, that was because he feared the effects of too much gladness, coming immediately after the heavy grief which her trials had caused her.

The tears of joy then shed by Cornelia were many and long-continued; infinite were the acknowledgments she offered to Heaven, innumerable the kisses she lavished on her son, and profuse the thanks which she offered from her heart to the two friends, whom she called her guardian angels on earth, with other names, which gave abundant proof of her gratitude. They soon afterwards left the lady with their housekeeper, whom they enjoined to attend her well, and do her all the service possible–having made known to the woman the position in which Cornelia found herself, to the end that she might take all necessary precautions, the nature of which, she, being a woman, would know much better than they could do. They then went to rest for the little that remained of the night, intending to enter Cornelia’s apartment no more, unless summoned by herself, or called thither by some pressing need.

The day having dawned, the housekeeper went to fetch a woman, who agreed to nurse the infant in silence and secrecy. Some hours later the friends inquired for Cornelia, and their servant told them that she had rested a little. Don Juan and Don Antonio then went to the Schools. As they passed by the street where the combat had taken place, and near the house whence Cornelia had fled, they took care to observe whether any signs of disorder were apparent, and whether the matter seemed to be talked of in the neighbourhood: but they could hear not a word respecting the affray of the previous night, or the absence of Cornelia. So, having duly attended the various lectures, they returned to their dwelling.

The lady then caused them to be summoned to her chamber; but finding that, from respect to her presence, they hesitated to appear, she replied to the message they sent her, with tears in her eyes, begging them to come and see her, which she declared to be now the best proof of their respect as well as interest; since, if they could not remedy, they might at least console her misfortunes.

Thus exhorted, the gentlemen obeyed, and Cornelia received them with a smiling face and great cordiality. She then entreated that they would do her the kindness to walk about the city, and ascertain if anything had transpired concerning her affairs. They replied, that they had already done so, with all possible care, but that not a word had been said reacting the matter.

At this moment, one of the three pages who served the gentlemen approached the door of the room telling his masters from without, that there was then at the street door, attended by two servants, a gentleman, who called himself Lorenzo Bentivoglio, and inquired for the Signor Don Juan de Gamboa. Hearing this message, Cornelia clasped her hands, and placing them on her mouth, she exclaimed, in a low and trembling voice, while her words came with difficulty through those clenched fingers, “It is my brother, Signors! it is my brother! Without doubt he has learned that I am here, and has come to take my life. Help and aid, Signors! help and aid!”

“Calm yourself, lady,” replied Don Antonio; “you are in a place of safety, and with people who will not suffer the smallest injury to be offered you. The Signor Don Juan will go to inquire what this gentleman demands, and I will remain to defend you, if need be, from all disturbance.”

Don Juan prepared to descend accordingly, and Don Antonio, taking his loaded pistols, bade the pages belt on their swords, and hold themselves in readiness for whatever might happen. The housekeeper, seeing these preparations began to tremble,–Cornelia, dreading some fearful result was in grievous terror,–Don Juan and Don Antonio alone preserved their coolness.

Arrived at the door of the house, Don Juan found Don Lorenzo, who, coming towards him, said, “I entreat your Lordship”–for such is the form of address among Italians–“I entreat your Lordship to do me the kindness to accompany me to the neighbouring church; I have to speak to you respecting an affair which concerns my life and honour.”

“Very willingly,” replied Don Juan. “Let us go, Signor, wherever you please.”

They walked side by side to the church, where they seated themselves on a retired bench, so as not to be overheard. Don Lorenzo was the first to break silence.

“Signor Spaniard,” he said, “I am Lorenzo Bentivoglio; if not of the richest, yet of one of the most important families belonging to this city; and if this seem like boasting of myself, the notoriety of the fact may serve as my excuse for naming it. I was left an orphan many years since, and to my guardianship was left a sister, so beautiful, that if she were not nearly connected with me, I might perhaps describe her in terms that, while they might seem exaggerated, would yet not by any means do justice to her attractions. My honour being very dear to me, and she being very young, as well as beautiful, I took all possible care to guard her at all points; but my best precautions have proved vain; the self-will of Cornelia, for that is her name, has rendered all useless. In a word, and not to weary you–for this story might become a long one,–I will but tell you, that the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este, vanquishing the eyes of Argus by those of a lynx, has rendered all my cares vain, by carrying off my sister last night from the house of one of our kindred; and it is even said that she has already become a mother.

“The misfortune of our house was made known to me last night, and I instantly placed myself on the watch; nay, I met and even attacked Alfonso, sword in hand; but he was succoured in good time by some angel, who would not permit me to efface in his blood the stain he has put upon me. My relation has told me, (and it is from her I have heard all,) that the duke deluded my sister, under a promise to make her his wife; but this I do not believe, for, in respect to present station and wealth, the marriage would not be equal, although, in point of blood, all the world knows how noble are the Bentivogli of Bologna. What I fear is, that the duke has done, what is but too easy when a great and powerful Prince desires to win a timid and retiring girl: he has merely called her by the tender name of wife, and made her believe that certain considerations have prevented him from marrying her at once,–a plausible pretence, but false and perfidious.

“Be that as it may, I see myself at once deprived of my sister and my honour. Up to this moment I have kept the matter secret, purposing not to make known the outrage to any one, until I see whether there may not be some remedy, or means of satisfaction to be obtained. It is better that a disgrace of this kind be supposed and suspected, than certainly and distinctly known–seeing that between the yes and the no of a doubt, each inclines to the opinion that most attracts him, and both sides of the question find defenders. Considering all these things, I have determined to repair to Ferrara, and there demand satisfaction from the duke himself. If he refuse it, I will then offer him defiance. Yet my defiance cannot be made with armed bands, for I could neither get them together nor maintain them but as from man to man. For this it is, then, that I desire your aid. I hope you will accompany me in the journey; nay, I am confident that you will do so, being a Spaniard and a gentleman, as I am told you are.

“I cannot entrust my purpose to any relation or friend of my family, knowing well that from them I should have nothing more than objections and remonstrances, while from you I may hope for sensible and honourable counsels, even though there should be peril in pursuing them. You must do me the favour to go with me, Signor. Having a Spaniard, and such as you appear to be, at my side, I shall account myself to have the armies of Xerxes. I am asking much at your hands; but the duty of answering worthily to what fame publishes of your nation, would oblige you to do still more than I ask.”

“No more, Signor Lorenzo,” exclaimed Don Juan, who had not before interrupted the brother of Cornelia; “no more. From this moment I accept the office you propose to me, and will be your defender and counsellor. I take upon myself the satisfaction of your honour, or due vengeance for the affront you have received, not only because I am a Spaniard, but because I am a gentleman, and you another, so noble, as you have said, as I know you to be, and as, indeed, all the world reputes you. When shall we set out? It would be better that we did so immediately, for a man does ever well to strike while the iron is hot. The warmth of anger increases courage, and a recent affront more effectually awakens vengeance.”

Hearing this, Don Lorenzo rose and embraced Don Juan, saying to him, “A person so generous as yourself, Signor Don Juan, needs no other incentive than that of the honour to be gained in such a cause: this honour you have assured to yourself to-day, if we come out happily from our adventure; but I offer you in addition all I can do, or am worth. Our departure I would have to be to-morrow, since I can provide all things needful to-day.”

“This appears to me well decided,” replied Don Juan, “but I must beg you, Signor Don Lorenzo, to permit me to make all known to a gentleman who is my friend, and of whose honour and silence I can assure you even more certainly than of my own, if that were possible.”

“Since you, Signor Don Juan,” replied Lorenzo, “have taken charge, as you say, of my honour, dispose of this matter as you please; and make it known to whom and in what manner it shall seem best to you; how much more, then, to a companion of your own, for what can he be but everything that is best.”

This said, the gentlemen embraced each other and took leave, after having agreed that on the following morning Lorenzo should send to summon Don Juan at an hour fixed on when they should mount their horses and pursue their journey in the disguise that Don Lorenzo had selected.

Don Juan then returned, and gave an account of all that had passed to Don Antonio and Cornelia, not omitting the engagement into which he had entered for the morrow.

“Good heavens, Signor!” exclaimed Cornelia; “what courtesy! what confidence! to think of your committing yourself without hesitation to an undertaking so replete with difficulties! How can you know whether Lorenzo will take you to Ferrara, or to what place indeed he may conduct you? But go with him whither you may, be certain that the very soul of honour and good faith will stand beside you. For myself, unhappy creature that I am, I shall be terrified at the very atoms that dance in the sunbeams, and tremble at every shadow; but how can it be otherwise, since on the answer of Duke Alfonso depends my life or death. How do I know that he will reply with sufficient courtesy to prevent the anger of my brother from passing the limits of discretion? and if Lorenzo should draw the sword, think ye he will have a despicable enemy to encounter? Must not I remain through all the days of your absence in a state of mortal suspense and terror, awaiting the favourable or grievous intelligence that you shall bring me! Do I love either my brother or the duke so little as not to tremble for both, and not feel the injury of either to my soul?”

“Your fears affect your judgment, Signora Cornelia,” replied Don Juan; “and they go too far. Amidst so many terrors, you should give some place to hope, and trust in God. Put some faith also in my care, and in the earnest desire I feel to see your affairs attain to a happy conclusion. Your brother cannot avoid making this journey to Ferrara, nor can I excuse myself from accompanying him thither. For the present we do not know the intentions of the duke, nor even whether he be or be not acquainted with your elopement. All this we must learn from his own mouth; and there is no one who can better make the inquiry than myself. Be certain, Signora, that the welfare and satisfaction of both your brother and the Signor Duke are to me as the apples of my eyes, and that I will care for the safety of the one as of the other.”

“Ah Signor Don Juan,” replied Cornelia, “if Heaven grant you as much power to remedy, as grace to console misfortune, I must consider myself exceedingly fortunate in the midst of my sorrows; and now would I fain see you gone and returned; for the whole time of your absence I must pass suspended between hope and fear.”

The determination of Don Juan was approved by Don Antonio, who commended him for the justification which he had thereby given to the confidence of Lorenzo Bentivoglio. He furthermore told his friend that he would gladly accompany him, to be ready for whatever might happen, but Don Juan replied–“Not so; first, because you must remain for the better security of the lady Cornelia, whom it will not be well to leave alone; and secondly, because I would not have Signor Lorenzo suppose that I desire to avail myself of the arm of another.” “But my arm is your own,” returned Don Antonio, “wherefore, if I must even disguise myself, and can but follow you at a distance, I will go with you; and as to Signora Cornelia, I know well that she will prefer to have me accompany you, seeing that she will not here want people who can serve and guard her.” “Indeed,” said Cornelia, “it will be a great consolation to me to know that you are together, Signors, or at least so near as to be able to assist each other in case of necessity; and since the undertaking you are going on appears to be dangerous, do me the favour, gentlemen, to take these Relics with you.” Saying this, Cornelia drew from her bosom a diamond cross, of great value, with an Agnus of gold equally rich and costly. The two gentlemen looked at the magnificent jewels, which they esteemed to be of still greater value than the decoration of the hat; but they returned them to the lady, each saying that he carried Relics of his own, which, though less richly decorated, were at least equally efficacious. Cornelia regretted much that they would not accept those she offered, but she was compelled to submit.

The housekeeper was now informed of the departure of her masters, though not of their destination, or of the purpose for which they went. She promised to take the utmost care of the lady, whose name she did not know, and assured her masters that she would be so watchful as to prevent her suffering in any manner from their absence.

Early the following morning Lorenzo was at the door, where he found Don Juan ready. The latter had assumed a travelling dress, with the rich sombrero presented by the duke, and which he had adorned with black and yellow plumes, placing a black covering over the band of brilliants. He went to take leave of Cornelia, who, knowing that her brother was near, fell into an agony of terror, and could not say one word to the two friends who were bidding her adieu. Don Juan went out the first, and accompanied Lorenzo beyond the walls of the city, where they found their servants waiting with the horses in a retired garden. They mounted, rode on before, and the servants guided their masters in the direction of Ferrara by ways but little known. Don Antonio followed on a low pony, and with such a change of apparel as sufficed to disguise him; but fancying that they regarded him with suspicion, especially Lorenzo, he determined to pursue the highway, and rejoin his friend in Ferrara, where he was certain to find him with but little difficulty.

The Spaniards had scarcely got clear of the city before Cornelia had confided her whole history to the housekeeper, informing her that the infant belonged to herself and to the Duke of Ferrara, and making her acquainted with all that has been related, not concealing from her that the journey made by her masters was to Ferrara, or that they went accompanied by her brother, who was going to challenge the Duke Alfonso.

Hearing all this, the housekeeper, as though the devil had sent her to complicate the difficulties and defer the restoration of Cornelia, began to exclaim–“Alas! lady of my soul! all these things have happened to you, and you remain carelessly there with your limbs stretched out, and doing nothing! Either you have no soul at all, or you have one so poor and weak that you do not feel it! And do you really suppose that your brother has gone to Ferrara? Believe nothing of the kind, but rather be sure that he has carried off my masters, and wiled them from the house, that he may return and take your life, for he can now do it as one would drink a cup of water. Consider only under what kind of guard and protection we are left–that of three pages, who have enough to do with their own pranks, and are little likely to put their hands to any thing good. I, for my part, shall certainly not have courage to await what must follow, and the destruction that cannot but come upon this house. The Signor Lorenzo, an Italian, to put his trust in Spaniards, and ask help and favour from them! By the light of my eyes. I will believe none of that!” So saying, she made a fig[2]A gesture of contempt or playfulness, as the case may be, and which consists in a certain twist of the fingers and thumb. at herself. “But if you, my daughter, will take good advice, I will give you such as shall truly enlighten your way.”

Cornelia was thrown into a pitiable state of alarm and confusion by these declarations of file housekeeper, who spoke with so much heat, and gave so many evidences of terror, that all she said appeared to be the very truth. The lady pictured to herself Don Antonio and Don Juan as perhaps already dead; she fancied her brother even then coming in at the door, and felt herself already pierced by the blows of his poniard. She therefore replied, “What advice do you then give me, good friend, that may prevent the catastrophe which threatens us?”

“I will give you counsel so good,” rejoined the housekeeper, “that better could not be. I, Signora, was formerly in the service of a priest, who has his abode in a village not more than two miles from Ferrara. He is a good and holy man, who will do whatever I require from him, since he is under more obligations to me than merely those of a master to a faithful servant. Let us go to him. I will seek some one who shall conduct us thither instantly; and the woman who comes to nurse the infant is a poor creature, who will go with us to the end of the world. And, now make ready, Signora; for supposing you are to be discovered, it would be much better that you should be found under the care of a good priest, old and respected, than in the hands of two young students, bachelors and Spaniards, who, as I can myself bear witness, are but little disposed to lose occasions for amusing themselves. Now that you are unwell, they treat you with respect; but if you get well and remain in their clutches, Heaven alone will be able to help you; for truly, if my cold disdain and repulses had not been my safeguard, they would long since have torn my honour to rags. All is not gold that glitters. Men say one thing, but think another: happily, it is with me that they have to do; and I am not to be deceived, but know well when the shoe pinches my foot. Above all, I am well born, for I belong to the Crivellis of Milan, and I carry the point of honour ten thousand feet above the clouds; by this you may judge, Signora, through what troubles I have had to pass, since, being what I am, I have been brought to serve as the housekeeper of Spaniards, or as, what they call, their gouvernante. Not that I have, in truth, any complaint to make of my masters, who are a couple of half-saints[3]The original is benditos, which sometimes means simpleton, but is here equivalent to the Italian beato, and must be rendered as in the text.when they are not put into a rage. And, in this respect, they would seem to be Biscayans, as, indeed, they say they are. But, after all, they may be Galicians, which is another nation, and much less exact than the Biscayans; neither are they so much to be depended on as the people of the Bay.”

By all this verbiage, and more beside, the bewildered lady was induced to follow the advice of the old woman, insomuch that, in less than four hours after the departure of the friends, their housekeeper making all arrangements, and Cornelia consenting, the latter was seated in a carriage with the nurse of the babe, and without being heard by the pages they set off on their way to the curate’s village. All this was done not only by the advice of the housekeeper, but also with her money; for her masters had just before paid her a year’s wages, and therefore it was not needful that she should take a jewel which Cornelia had offered her for the purposes of their journey.

Having heard Don Juan say that her brother and himself would not follow the highway to Ferrara, but proceed thither by retired paths, Cornelia thought it best to take the high road. She bade the driver, go slowly, that they might not overtake the gentlemen in any case; and the master of the carriage was well content to do as they liked, since they had paid him as he liked.

We will leave them on their way, which they take with as much boldness as good direction, and let us see what happened to Don Juan de Gamboa and Signor Lorenzo Bentivoglio. On their way they heard that the duke had not gone to Ferrara, but was still at Bologna, wherefore, abandoning the round they were making, they regained the high road, considering that it was by this the duke would travel on his return to Ferrara. Nor had they long entered thereon before they perceived a troop of men on horseback coming as it seemed from Bologna.

Don Juan then begged Lorenzo to withdraw to a little distance, since, if the duke should chance to be of the company approaching, it would be desirable that he should speak to him before he could enter Ferrara, which was but a short distance from them. Lorenzo complied, and as soon as he had withdrawn, Don Juan removed the covering by which he had concealed the rich ornament of his hat; but this was not done without some little indiscretion, as he was himself the first to admit some time after.

Meanwhile the travellers approached; among them came a woman on a pied-horse, dressed in a travelling habit, and her face covered with a silk mask, either to conceal her features, or to shelter them from the effects of the sun and air.

Don Juan pulled up his horse in the middle of the road, and remained with his face uncovered, awaiting the arrival of the cavalcade. As they approached him, the height, good looks, and spirited attitude of the Spaniard, the beauty of his horse, his peculiar dress, and, above all, the lustre of the diamonds on his hat, attracted the eyes of the whole party but especially those of the Duke of Ferrara, the principal personage of the group, who no sooner beheld the band of brilliants than he understood the cavalier before him to be Don Juan de Gamboa, his deliverer in the combat frequently alluded to. So well convinced did he feel of this, that, without further question, he rode up to Don Juan, saying, “I shall certainly not deceive myself, Signor Cavalier, if I call you Don Juan de Gamboa, for your spirited looks, and the decoration you wear on your hat, alike assure me of the fact.”

“It is true that I am the person you say,” replied Don Juan. “I have never yet desired to conceal my name; but tell me, Signor, who you are yourself, that I may not be surprised into any discourtesy.”

“Discourtesy from you, Signor, would be impossible,” rejoined the duke. “I feel sure that you could not be discourteous in any case; but I hasten to tell you, nevertheless, that I am the Duke of Ferrara, and a man who will be bound to do you service all the days of his life, since it is but a few nights since you gave him that life which must else have been lost.”

Alfonzo had not finished speaking, when Don Juan, springing lightly from his horse, hastened to kiss the feet of the duke; but, with all his agility, the latter was already out of the saddle, and alighted in the arms of the Spaniard.

Seeing this, Signor Lorenzo, who could but observe these ceremonies from a distance, believed that what he beheld was the effect of anger rather than courtesy; he therefore put his horse to its speed, but pulled up midway on perceiving that the duke and Don Juan were of a verity clasped in each other’s arms. It then chanced that Alfonso, looking over the shoulders of Don Juan, perceived Lorenzo, whom he instantly recognised; and somewhat disconcerted at his appearance, while still holding Don Juan embraced, he inquired if Lorenzo Bentivoglio, whom he there beheld, had come with him or not. Don Juan replied, “Let us move somewhat apart from this place, and I will relate to your excellency some very singular circumstances.”

The duke having done as he was requested, Don Juan said to him, “My Lord Duke, I must tell you that Lorenzo Bentivoglio, whom you there see, has a cause of complaint against you, and not a light one; he avers that some nights since you took his sister, the Lady Cornelia, from the house of a lady, her cousin, and that you have deceived her, and dishonoured his house; he desires therefore to know what satisfaction you propose to make for this, that he may then see what it behoves him to do. He has begged me to be his aid and mediator in the matter, and I have consented with a good will, since, from certain indications which he gave me, I perceived that the person of whom of complained, and yourself, to whose liberal courtesy I owe this rich ornament, were one and the same. Thus, seeing that none could more effectually mediate between you than myself, I offered to undertake that office willingly, as I have said; and now I would have you tell me, Signor, if you know aught of this matter, and whether what Lorenzo has told me be true.”

“Alas, my friend, it is so true,” replied the duke, “that I durst not deny it, even if I would. Yet I have not deceived or carried off Cornelia, although I know that she has disappeared from the house of which you speak. I have not deceived her, because I have taken her for my wife; and I have not carried her off, since I do not know what has become of her. If I have not publicly celebrated my nuptials with her, it is because I waited until my mother, who is now at the last extremity, should have passed to another life, she desiring greatly that I should espouse the Signora Livia, daughter of the Duke of Mantua. There are, besides, other reasons, even more important than this, but which it is not convenient that I should now make known.

“What has in fact happened is this:–on the night when you came to my assistance, I was to have taken Cornelia to Ferrara, she being then in the last month of her pregnancy, and about to present me with that pledge of our love with which it has pleased God to bless us; but whether she was alarmed by our combat or by my delay, I know not; all I can tell you is, that when I arrived at the house, I met the confidante of our affection just coming out. From her I learned that her mistress had that moment left the house, after having given birth to a son, the most beautiful that ever had been seen, and whom she had given to one Fabio, my servant. The woman is she whom you see here. Fabio is also in this company; but of Cornelia and her child I can learn nothing. These two days I have passed at Bologna, in ceaseless endeavours to discover her, or to obtain some clue to her retreat, but I have not been able to learn anything.”

“In that case,” interrupted Don Juan, “if Cornelia and her child were now to appear, you would not refuse to admit that the first is your wife, and the second your son?”

“Certainly not,” replied the duke; “for if I value myself on being a gentleman, still more highly do I prize the title of Christian. Cornelia, besides, is one who well deserves to be mistress of a kingdom. Let her but come, and whether my mother live or die, the world shall know that I maintain my faith, and that my word, given in private, shall be publicly redeemed.”

“And what you have now said to me you are willing to repeat to your brother, Signor Lorenzo?” inquired Don Juan.

“My only regret is,” exclaimed the duke, “that he has not long before been acquainted with the truth.”

Hearing this, Don Juan made sign to Lorenzo that he should join them, which he did, alighting from his horse and proceeding towards the place where his friends stood, but far from hoping for the good news that awaited him.

The duke advanced to receive him with open arms, and the first word he uttered was to call him brother. Lorenzo scarcely knew how to reply to a reception so courteous and a salutation so affectionate. He stood amazed, and before he could utter a word, Don Juan said to him, “The duke, Signor Lorenzo, is but too happy to admit his affection for your sister, the Lady Cornelia; and, at the same time, he assures you, that she is his legitimate consort. This, as he now says it to you, he will affirm publicly before all the world, when the moment for doing so has arrived. He confesses, moreover, that he did propose to remove her from the house of her cousin some nights since, intending to take her to Ferrara, there to await the proper time for their public espousals, which he has only delayed for just causes, which he has declared to me. He describes the conflict he had to maintain against yourself; and adds, that when he went to seek Cornelia, he found only her waiting-woman, Sulpicia, who is the woman you see yonder: from her he has learned that her lady had just given birth to a son, whom she entrusted to a servant of the duke, and then left the house in terror, because she feared that you, Signor Lorenzo, had been made aware of her secret marriage: the lady hoped, moreover, to find the duke awaiting her in the street. But it seems that Sulpicia did not give the babe to Fabio, but to some other person instead of him, and the child does not appear, neither is the Lady Cornelia to be found, in spite of the duke’s researches. He admits, that all these things have happened by his fault; but declares, that whenever your sister shall appear, he is ready to receive her as his legitimate wife. Judge, then, Signor Lorenzo, if there be any more to say or to desire beyond the discovery of those two dear but unfortunate ones–the lady and her infant.”

To this Lorenzo replied by throwing himself at the feet of the duke, who raised him instantly. “From your greatness and Christian uprightness, most noble lord and dear brother,” said Lorenzo, “my sister and I had certainly nothing less than this high honour to expect.” Saying this, tears came to his eyes, and the duke felt his own becoming moist, for both were equally affected,–the one with the fear of having lost his wife, the other by the generous candour of his brother-in-law; but at once perceiving the weakness of thus displaying their feelings, they both restrained themselves, and drove back those witnesses to their source; while the eyes of Don Juan, shining with gladness, seemed almost to demand from them the albricias[4]Albricias: “Largess!” “Give reward for good tidings.”of good news, seeing that he believed himself to have both Cornelia and her son in his own house.

Things were at this point when Don Antonio de Isunza, whom Don Juan recognised at a considerable distance by his horse, was perceived approaching. He also recognised Don Juan and Lorenzo, but not the duke, and did not know what he was to do, or whether he ought to rejoin his friend or not. He therefore inquired of the duke’s servants who the gentleman was, then standing with Lorenzo and Don Juan. They replied that it was the Duke of Ferrara; and Don Antonio, knowing less than ever what it was best for him to do, remained in some confusion, until he was relieved from it by Don Juan, who called him by his name. Seeing that all were on foot, Don Antonio also dismounted, and, approaching the group, was received with infinite courtesy by the duke, to whom Don Juan had already named him as his friend; finally, Don Antonio was made acquainted with all that had taken place before his arrival.

Rejoicing greatly at what he heard, Don Antonio then said to his comrade, “Why, Signor Don Juan, do you not finish your work, and raise the joy of these Signors to its acmè, by requiring from them the albricias for discovering the Lady Cornelia and her son?”

“Had you not arrived, I might have taken those albricias you speak of,” replied Don Juan; “but now they are yours, Don Antonio, for I am certain that the duke and Signor Lorenzo will give them to you most joyfully.”

The duke and Lorenzo hearing of Cornelia being found, and of albricias, inquired the meaning of those words.

“What can it be,” replied Don Antonio, “if not that I also design to become one of the personages in this happily terminating drama, being he who is to demand the albricias for the discovery of the Lady Cornelia and her son, who are both in my house.” He then at once related to the brothers, point by point, what has been already told, intelligence which gave the duke and Lorenzo so much pleasure, that each embraced one of the friends with all his heart, Lorenzo throwing himself into the arms of Don Juan, and the duke into those of Don Antonio–the latter promising his whole dukedom for albricias, and Lorenzo his life, soul, and estates. They then called the woman who had given the child to Don Juan, and she having perceived her master, Lorenzo Bentivoglio, came forward, trembling. Being asked if she could recognise the man to whom she had given the infant, she replied that she could not; but that when she had asked if he were Fabio, he had answered “yes,” and that she had entrusted the babe to his care in the faith of that reply.

“All this is true,” returned Don Juan; “and you furthermore bade me deposit the child in a place of security, and instantly return.”

“I did so,” replied the waiting-woman, weeping. But the duke exclaimed, “We will have no more tears; all is gladness and joy. I will not now enter Ferrara, but return at once to Bologna; for this happiness is but in shadow until made perfect by the sight of Cornelia herself.” Then, without more words, the whole company wheeled round, and took their way to Bologna.

Don Antonio now rode forward to prepare the Lady Cornelia, lest the sudden appearance of her brother and the duke might cause too violent a revulsion; but not finding her as he expected, and the pages being unable to give him any intelligence respecting her, he suddenly found himself the saddest and most embarrassed man in the world. Learning that the gouvernante had departed, he was not long in conjecturing that the lady had disappeared by her means. The pages informed him that the housekeeper had gone on the same day with himself and Don Juan, but as to that Lady Cornelia, respecting whom he inquired, they had never seen her. Don Antonio was almost out of his senses at this unexpected occurrence, which, he feared, must make the duke consider himself and Don Juan to be mere liars and boasters. He was plunged in these sad thoughts when Alfonso entered with Lorenzo and Don Juan, who had spurred on before the attendants by retired and unfrequented streets. They found Don Antonio seated with his head on his hand, and as pale as a man who has been long dead, and when Don Juan inquired what ailed him, and where was the Lady Cornelia, he replied, “Rather ask me what do I not ail, since the Lady Cornelia is not to be found. She quitted the house, on the same day as ourselves, with the gouvernante we left to keep her company.”

This sad news seemed as though it would deprive the duke of life, and Lorenzo of his senses. The whole party remained in the utmost consternation and dismay; when one of the pages said to Don Antonio in a whisper, “Signor, Santisteban, Signor Don Juan’s page, has had locked up in his chamber, from the day when your worships left, a very pretty woman, whose name is certainly Cornelia, for I have heard him call her so.” Plunged into a new embarrassment, Don Antonio would rather not have found the lady at all–for he could not but suppose it was she whom the page had shut up in his room–than have discovered her in such a place. Nevertheless, without saying a word, he ascended to the page’s chamber, but found the door fast, for the young man had gone out, and taken away the key. Don Antonio therefore put his lips to the keyhole, and said in a low voice, “Open the door, Signora Cornelia, and come down to receive your brother, and the duke, your husband, who are waiting to take you hence.”

A voice from within replied, “Are you making fun of me? It is certain that I am neither so ugly nor so old but that dukes and counts may very well be looking for me: but this comes of condescending to visit pages.” These words quite satisfied Don Antonio that it was not the Lady Cornelia who had replied.

At that moment Santisteban returned and went up to his chamber, where he found Don Antonio, who had just commanded that all the keys of the house should be brought, to see if any one of them would open the door. The page fell on his knees, and held up the key, exclaiming, “Have mercy on me, your worship: your absence, or rather my own villainy, made me bring this woman to my room; but I entreat your grace, Don Antonio, as you would have good news from Spain, that you suffer the fault I have committed to remain unknown to my master, Don Juan, if he be not yet informed of it; I will turn her out this instant.”

“What is the name of this woman?” inquired Don Antonio. “Cornelia,” replied Santisteban. Down stairs at once went the page who had discovered the hidden woman, and who was not much of a friend to Santisteban, and entered the room where sat the duke, Don Juan, and Lorenzo, and, either from simplicity or malice, began to talk to himself, saying, “Well caught, brother page! by Heaven they have made you give up your Lady Cornelia! She was well hidden, to be sure; and no doubt my gentleman would have liked to see the masters remain away that he might enjoy himself some three or four days longer.”

“What is that you are saying?” cried Lorenzo, who had caught a part of these words. “Where is the Lady Cornelia?” “She is above,” replied the page; and the duke, who supposed that his consort had just made her appearance, had scarcely heard the words before he rushed from the apartment like a flash of lightning, and, ascending the staircase at a bound, gained the chamber into which Don Antonio was entering.

“Where is Cornelia? where is the life of my life?” he exclaimed, as he hurried into the room.

“Cornelia is here,” replied a woman who was wrapped in a quilt taken from the bed with which she had concealed her face. “Lord bless us!” she continued, “one would think an ox had been stolen! Is it a new thing for a woman to visit a page, that you make such a fuss about it?”

Lorenzo, who had now entered the room, angrily snatched off the sheet and exposed to view a woman still young and not ill-looking, who hid her face in her hands for shame, while her dress, which served her instead of a pillow, sufficiently proved her to be some poor castaway.

The duke asked her, was it true her name was Cornelia? It was, she replied–adding, that she had very decent parents in the city, but that no one could venture to say, “Of this water I will never drink.”

The duke was so confounded by all he beheld, that he was almost inclined to think the Spaniards were making a fool of him; but, not to encourage so grievous a suspicion, he turned away without saying a word. Lorenzo followed him; they mounted their horses and rode off, leaving Don Juan and Don Antonio even more astonished and dismayed than himself.

The two friends now determined to leave no means untried, possible or impossible, to discover the retreat of the Lady Cornelia, and convince the duke of their sincerity and uprightness. They dismissed Santisteban for his misconduct, and turned the worthless Cornelia out of the house. Don Juan then remembered that they had neglected to describe to the duke those rich jewels wherein Cornelia carried her relics, with the agnus she had offered to them; and they went out proposing to mention that circumstance, so as to prove to Alfonso that the lady had, indeed, been in their care, and that if she had now disappeared, it was not by any fault of theirs.

They expected to find the duke in Lorenzo’s house; but the latter informed them that Alfonso had been compelled to leave Bologna, and had returned to Ferrara, having committed the search for Cornelia to his care. The friends having told him what had brought them, Lorenzo assured them that the duke was perfectly convinced of their rectitude in the matter, adding, that they both attributed the flight of Cornelia to her great fear, but hoped, and did not doubt, that Heaven would permit her re-appearance before long, since it was certain that the earth had not swallowed the housekeeper, the child, and herself.

With these considerations they all consoled themselves, determining not to make search by any public announcement, but secretly, since, with the exception of her cousin, no person was yet acquainted with the disappearance of Cornelia; and Lorenzo judged that a public search might prove injurious to his sister’s name among such as did not know the whole circumstances of the case, since the labour of effacing such suspicions as might arise would be infinite, and by no means certain of success.

The duke meanwhile continued his journey to Ferrara, and favouring Fortune, which was now preparing his happiness, led him to the village where dwelt that priest in whose house Cornelia, her infant, and the housekeeper, were concealed. The good Father was acquainted with the whole history, and Cornelia had begged his advice as to what it would be best for her to do. Now this priest had been the preceptor of the duke; and to his dwelling, which was furnished in a manner befitting that of a rich and learned clerk, the duke was in the habit of occasionally repairing from Ferrara, and would thence go to the chase, or amuse himself with the pleasant conversation of his host, and with the knowledge and excellence of which the good priest gave evidence in all he did or said.

The priest was not surprised to receive a visit from the duke, because, as we have said, it was not the first by many; but he was grieved to see him sad and dejected, and instantly perceived that his whole soul was absorbed in some painful thought. As to Cornelia, having been told that the duke was there, she was seized with renewed terror, not knowing how her misfortunes were to terminate. She wrung her hands, and hurried from one side of her apartment to the other, like a person who had lost her senses. Fain would the troubled lady have spoken to the priest, but he was in conversation with the Duke, and could not be approached. Alfonso was meanwhile saying to him, “I come to you, my father, full of sadness, and will not go to Ferrara to-day, but remain your guest; give orders for all my attendants to proceed to the city, and let none remain with me but Fabio.”

The priest went to give directions accordingly, as also to see that his own servants made due preparations; and Cornelia then found an opportunity for speaking to him. She took his two hands and said, “Ah, my father, and dear sir, what has the duke come for? for the love of God see what can be done to save me! I pray you, seek to discover what he proposes. As a friend, do for me whatever shall seem best to your prudence and great wisdom.”

The priest replied, “Duke Alfonso has come to me in deep sadness, but up to this moment he has not told me the cause. What I would have you now do is to dress this infant with great care, put on it all the jewels you have with you, more especially such as you may have received from the duke himself; leave the rest to me, and I have hope that Heaven is about to grant us a happy day.” Cornelia embraced the good man, and kissed his hand, and then retired to dress and adorn the babe, as he had desired.

The priest, meanwhile, returned to entertain the duke with conversation while his people were preparing their meal; and in the course of their colloquy he inquired if he might venture to ask him the cause of his grief, since it was easy to see at the distance of a league that, something gave him sorrow.

“Father,” replied the duke, “it is true that the sadness of the heart rises to the face, and in the eyes may be read the history of that which passes in the soul; but for the present I cannot confide the cause of my sorrow to any one.”

“Then we will not speak of it further, my lord duke,” replied the priest; “but if you were in a condition permitting you to examine a curious and beautiful thing, I have one to show you which I cannot but think would afford you great pleasure.”

“He would be very unwise,” returned Alfonso, “who, when offered a solace for his suffering, refuses to accept it. Wherefore show me what you speak of, father; the object is doubtless an addition to one of your curious collections, and they have all great interest in my eyes.”

The priest then rose, and repaired to the apartment where Cornelia was awaiting him with her son, whom she had adorned as he had suggested, having placed on him the relics and agnus, with other rich jewels, all gifts of the duke to the babe’s mother. Taking the infant from her hands, the good priest then went to the duke, and telling him that he must rise and come to the light of the window, he transferred the babe from his own arms into those of Alfonso, who could not but instantly remark the jewels; and perceiving that they were those which he had himself given to Cornelia, he remained in great surprise. Looking earnestly at the infant, meanwhile, he fancied he beheld his own portrait; and full of admiration, he asked the priest to whom the child belonged, remarking, that from its decorations and appearance one might take it to be the son of some princess.

“I do not know,” replied the priest, “to whom it belongs; all I can tell you is, that it was brought to me some nights since by a cavalier of Bologna, who charged me to take good care of the babe and bring it up heedfully, since it was the son of a noble and valiant father, and of a mother highly born as well as beautiful. With the cavalier there came also a woman to suckle the infant, and of her I have inquired if she knew anything of the parents, but she tells me that she knows nothing whatever; yet of a truth, if the mother possess but half the beauty of the nurse, she must be the most lovely woman in Italy.”

“Could I not see her?” asked the Duke. “Yes, certainly you may see her,” returned the priest. “You have only to come with me; and if the beauty and decorations of the child surprise you, I think the sight of the nurse cannot fail to produce an equal effect.”

The priest would then have taken the infant from the duke, but Alfonso would not let it go; he pressed it in his arms, and gave it repeated kisses; the good father, meanwhile, hastened forward, and bade Cornelia approach to receive the duke. The lady obeyed; her emotion giving so rich a colour to her face that the beauty she displayed seemed something more than human. The duke, on seeing her, remained as if struck by a thunderbolt, while she, throwing herself at his feet, sought to kiss them. The duke said not a word, but gave the infant to the priest, and hurried out of the apartment.

Shocked at this, Cornelia said to the priest, “Alas, dear father, have I terrified the duke with the sight of my face? am I become hateful to him? Has he forgot the ties by which he has bound himself to me? Will he not speak one word to me? Was his child such a burden to him that he has thus rejected him from his arm’s?”

To all these questions the good priest could give no reply, for he too was utterly confounded by the duke’s hasty departure, which seemed more like a flight than anything else.

Meanwhile Alfonso had but gone out to summon Fabio. “Ride Fabio, my friend,” he cried, “ride for your life to Bologna, and tell Lorenzo Bentivoglio that he must come with all speed to this place; let him make no excuse, and bid him bring with him the two Spanish gentlemen, Don Juan de Gamboa and Don Antonio de Isunza. Return instantly, Fabio, but not without them, for it concerns my life to see them here.”

Fabio required no further pressing, but instantly carried his master’s commands into effect. The duke returned at once to Cornelia, caught her in his arms, mingled his tears with hers, and kissed her a thousand times; and long did the fond pair remain thus silently locked in each other’s embrace, both speechless from excess of joy. The nurse of the infant and the dame, who proclaimed herself a Crivella, beheld all this from the door of the adjoining apartment, and fell into such ecstasies of delight that they knocked their heads against the wall, and seemed all at once to have gone out of their wits. The priest bestowed a thousand kisses on the infant, whom he held on one arm, while with his right hand he showered no end of benedictions on the noble pair. At length his reverence’s housekeeper, who had been occupied with her culinary preparations, and knew nothing of what had occurred, entered to notify to her master that dinner was on the table, and so put an end to this scene of rapture.

The duke then took his babe from the arms of the priest, and kept it in his own during the repast, which was more remarkable for neatness and good taste than for splendour. While they were at table, Cornelia related to the duke all that had occurred until she had taken refuge with the priest, by the advice of the housekeeper of those two Spanish gentlemen, who had protected and guarded her with such assiduous and respectful kindness. In return the duke related to her all that had befallen himself during the same interval; and the two housekeepers, who were present, received from him the most encouraging promises. All was joy and satisfaction, and nothing more was required for the general happiness, save the arrival of Lorenzo, Don Antonio, and Don Juan.

They came on the third day, all intensely anxious to know if the duke had received intelligence of Cornelia, seeing that Fabio, who did not know what had happened, could tell them nothing on that subject.

The duke received them alone in the antechamber, but gave no sign of gladness in his face, to their great grief and disappointment. Bidding them be seated, Alfonso himself sat down, and thus addressed Lorenzo:–

“You well know, Signor Lorenzo Bentivoglio, that I never deceived your sister, as my conscience and Heaven itself can bear witness; you know also the diligence with which I have sought her, and the wish I have felt to have my marriage with her celebrated publicly. But she is not to be found, and my word cannot so considered eternally engaged to a shadow. I am a young man, and am not so blasé as to leave ungathered such pleasures as I find on my path. Before I had ever seen Cornelia I had given my promise to a peasant girl of this village, but whom I was tempted to abandon by the superior charms of Cornelia, giving therein a great proof of my love for the latter, in defiance of the voice of my conscience. Now, therefore, since no one can marry a woman who does not appear, and it is not reasonable that a man should eternally run after a wife who deserts him, lest he should take to his arms one who abhors him, I would have you consider, Signor Lorenzo, whether I can give you any further satisfaction for an affront which was never intended to be one; and further, I would have you give me your permission to accomplish my first promise, and solemnise my marriage with the peasant girl, who is now in this house.”

While the duke spoke this, Lorenzo’s frequent change of colour, and the difficulty with which he forced himself to retain his seat, gave manifest proof that anger was taking possession of all his senses. The same feelings agitated Don Antonio and Don Juan, who were resolved not to permit the duke to fulfil his intention, even should they be compelled to prevent it by depriving him of life. Alfonso, reading these resolves in their faces, resumed: “Endeavour to calm yourself, Signor Lorenzo; and before you answer me one word, I will have you see the beauty of her whom I desire to take to wife, for it is such that you cannot refuse your consent, and it might suffice, as you will acknowledge, to excuse a graver error than mine.”

So saying, the duke rose, and repaired to the apartment where Cornelia was awaiting him in all the splendour of her beauty and rich decorations. No sooner was he gone than Don Juan also rose, and laying both hands on the arms of Lorenzo’s chair, he said to him, “By St. James of Galicia, by the true faith of a Christian, and by my honour as a gentleman, Signor Lorenzo, I will as readily allow the duke to fulfil his project as I will become a worshipper of Mahomed. Here, in this spot, he shall yield up his life at my hands, or he shall redeem the promise given to your sister, the lady Cornelia. At the least, he shall give us time to seek her; and until we know to a certainty that she is dead, he shall not marry.”

“That is exactly my own view,” replied Lorenzo. “And I am sure,” rejoined Don Juan, “that it will be the determination of my comrade, Don Antonio, likewise.”

While they were thus speaking, Cornelia appeared at the door between the duke and the priest, each of whom led her by one hand. Behind them came Sulpicia, her waiting woman, whom the duke had summoned from Ferrara to attend her lady, with the infant’s nurse, and the Spaniards’ housekeeper. When Lorenzo saw his sister, and had assured himself it was indeed Cornelia,–for at first the apparently impossible character of the occurrence had forbidden his belief,–he staggered on his feet, and cast himself at those of the duke, who, raising him, placed him in the arms of his delighted sister, whilst Don Juan and Don Antonio hastily applauded the duke for the clever trick he had played upon them all.

Alfonso then took the infant from Sulpicia, and, presenting it to Lorenzo, he said, “Signor and brother, receive your nephew, my son, and see whether it please you to give permission for the public solemnisation of my marriage with this peasant girl–the only one to whom I have ever been betrothed.”

To repeat the replies of Lorenzo would be never to make an end, and the rather if to these we added the questions of Don Juan, the remarks of Don Antonio, the expressions of delight uttered by the priest, the rejoicing of Sulpicia, the satisfaction of the housekeeper who had made herself the counsellor of Cornelia, the exclamations of the nurse, and the astonishment of Fabio, with the general happiness of all.

The marriage ceremony was performed by the good priest, and Don Juan de Gamboa gave away the bride; but it was agreed among the parties that this marriage also should be kept secret, until he knew the result of the malady under which the duchess-dowager was labouring; for the present, therefore, it was determined that Cornelia should return to Bologna with her brother. All was done as thus agreed on; and when the duchess-dowager died, Cornelia made her entrance into Ferrara, rejoicing the eyes of all who beheld her: the mourning weeds were exchanged for festive robes, the two housekeepers were enriched, and Sulpicia was married to Fabio. For Don Antonio and Don Juan, they were sufficiently rewarded by the services they had rendered to the duke, who offered them two of his cousins in marriage, with rich dowries. But they replied, that the gentlemen of the Biscayan nation married for the most part in their own country; wherefore, not because they despised so honourable a proffer, which was not possible, but that they might not depart from a custom so laudable, they were compelled to decline that illustrious alliance, and the rather as they were still subject to the will of their parents, who had, most probably, already affianced them.

The duke admitted the validity of their excuses, but, availing himself of occasions warranted by custom and courtesy, he found means to load the two friends with rich gifts, which he sent from time to time to their house in Bologna. Many of these were of such value, that although they might have been refused for fear of seeming to receive a payment, yet the appropriate manner in which they were presented, and the particular periods at which Alfonso took care that they should arrive, caused their acceptance to be easy, not to say inevitable; such, for example, were those despatched by him at the moment of their departure for their own country, and those which he gave them when they came to Ferrara to take their leave of him.

At this period, the Spanish gentlemen found Cornelia the mother of two little girls, and the duke more enamoured of his wife than ever. The duchess gave the diamond cross to Don Juan, and the gold agnus to Don Antonio, both of whom had now no choice but to accept them. They finally arrived without accident in their native Spain, where they married rich, noble, and beautiful ladies; and they never ceased to maintain a friendly correspondence with the duke and duchess of Ferrara, and with Lorenzo Bentivoglio, to the great satisfaction of all parties.

 

THE END OF THE LADY CORNELIA.

References

References
1 Cardinal Albornoz founded a college in the University of Bologna, expressly for the Spaniards, his countrymen.
2 A gesture of contempt or playfulness, as the case may be, and which consists in a certain twist of the fingers and thumb.
3 The original is benditos, which sometimes means simpleton, but is here equivalent to the Italian beato, and must be rendered as in the text.
4 Albricias: “Largess!” “Give reward for good tidings.”

Confusion of Confusions, by Jose de la Vega (1688)

Jose or Joseph Penso de la Vega, best known as Joseph de la Vega (ca. 1650 — Amsterdam, November 13, 1692), was a Sephardi Jewish merchant in diamonds, financial expert, moral philosopher and poet, residing in 17th century Amsterdam. He became famous for his masterpiece Confusion of Confusions. Vega’s work is the first study written about the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and its participants, the shareholders. In a stilted style he describes the whole gamut, running from options (puts and calls), futures contracts, margin buying, to bull and bear conspiracies, even some form of stock-index trading. The publication of Confusion de Confusiones helped lay the foundations for modern fields of technical analysis and behavioral finance.

The book is written in Spanish; its original title is Confusion de Confusiones. It was printed in Amsterdam, but published in Antwerp. Although not a descriptive account of the process of stock trading, Joseph presented the history of speculation in stocks, ducatons and acquainted the reader with the sophisticated financial instruments used. The dialogue format allowed the reader to understand the respective perspectives of the various market participants and the intricacies of speculation and trading.

Joseph  came up with four basic rules of the share market that are still of the greatest relevance today.

The first rule in speculation is: Never advise anyone to buy or sell shares. Where guessing correctly is a form of witchcraft, counsel cannot be put on airs.

The second rule: Accept both your profits and regrets. It is best to seize what comes to hand when it comes, and not expect that your good fortune and the favorable circumstances will last.

The third rule: Profit in the share market is goblin treasure: at one moment, it is carbuncles, the next it is coal; one moment diamonds, and the next pebbles. Sometimes, they are the tears that Aurora leaves on the sweet morning’s grass, at other times, they are just tears.

The fourth rule: He who wishes to become rich from this game must have both money and patience.

Confusion de Confusiones remained little known until the German economist Richard Ehrenberg published an influential essay in the 1892 Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, “Die Amsterdame Aktienspekulation un 17. Jarhhundert.”

In his honour, the Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) awards since 2000 the annual De La Vega Prize to “young European researchers who distinguish themselves by outstanding research on the securities markets in Europe“.

In English, you can download Portions Descriptive of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange Selected and Translated by Professor Hermann Kellenbenz (2013)

In Spanish, see this 2013 version in modern Spanish, introduction and notes by Ricardo A. Fornero, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina): you can download it here.

Original version in Spanish in archive.org

Recently, December 2021, professor Carmen Baños gave a lecture about Confusio of Confusions in Fundacion Gustavo Bueno that can be seen online.

Invertebrate Spain, by Jose Ortega y Gasset (1921)

This year 2021 we celebrate the centenary of the publication of Invertebrate Spain, by Jose Ortega y Gasset (1921). It was translated into English in 1937 by Mildred Adams (1894-1980).

Download Invertebrate Spain in English:

A collection of essays from one of Spain’s leading intellectuals. They were first published in 1921 with a fourth edition appearing in 1934, and form an analysis of the many ills from which the author sees his country to be suffering.

The conclusions he arrives at are as gloomy as the future which he sees to be inevitable. It is indeed remarkable how the events of 1936 have justified his fears of 1921. But one cannot help a feeling of surprise that the author, having shown that he possessed such a clear realisation of the dangers that beset his country, should have made no attempt to suggest a way out.

Essayist and philosopher, a thinker influential in and out of the Spanish world, Jose Ortega y Gasset was professor of metaphysics at the University of Madrid from 1910 until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The Revolt of the Masses, his most famous work, owes much to post-Kantian schools of thought. Ortega’s predominant thesis is the need of an intellectual aristocracy governing in a spirit of enlightened liberalism. Although Franco, after his victory in the civil war, offered to make Ortega Spain’s “official philosopher” and to publish a deluxe edition of his works, with certain parts deleted, the philosopher refused. Instead, he chose the life of a voluntary exile in Argentina, and in 1941 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru.

He returned to Spain in 1945 and died in Madrid. Ortega’s reformulation of the Cartesian cogito displays the fulcrum of his thought. While Rene Descartes declared “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), Ortega maintained “Cogito quia vivo” (I think because I live). He subordinated reason to life, to vitality. Reason becomes the tool of people existing biologically in a given time and place, rather than an overarching sovereign. Ortega’s philosophy consequently discloses affinities in its metaphysics to both American pragmatism and European existentialism in spite of its elitism in social philosophy.

Read Invertebrate Spain, in Spanish, first edition of 1921, in this link.

Liberalism and Communism, by Gregorio Marañón (1937)

Dr. Gregorio Marañón (1887-1960) author of this remarkable article, was a member of the Spanish Academy. Physician, biologist and essayist, he collaborated with Ortega y Gasset and Pérez de Ayala in forming a republican association, which was spreading in Spain a year before the fall of the monarchy. Dr. Marañón’s republicanism, therefore, stands in no need of proof and this gives an added significance to the article in which the author explains why most of the Spanish Liberals were hostile to the Republican Government in 1937.

His article ‘Liberalism and Communism’ has the subtitle ‘The Background of the Spanish Civil War’ but it is much more than that. It was written in Paris for the Revue de Paris, first published on 15 December 1937. It also appeared in the Argentine newspaper La Nación (3 January 1938). Final version was published in Punta Europa magazine, n. 55-56, Madrid, 1960.

Dr. Marañón, on spite of his support to the Spanish republican government, had to exile from Madrid in the middle of the civil war.

Link to the Spanish version Liberalismo y Comunismo (1937)

From his book Liberal Essays, 1947:

Being a liberal is precisely these two things: first, being willing to get along with someone who thinks otherwise; and second, never admit that the end justifies the means but, on the contrary, it is the means that justify the end. Liberalism is, then, a conduct and, therefore, much more than a policy. And, as such behavior, it does not require professions of faith but to exercise it, in a natural way, without exhibiting it or showing it off. One must be liberal without realizing it, how one is clean, or how, instinctively, we resist lying

Some of the key ideas from Dr. Marañón in this article:

“The Spanish liberal […] had underneath his liberalism an attitude which was profoundly anti-liberal, for the simple reason that it was tinted red.” (p. 6)

“[…] the fact that the Right parties won the elections was made the pretext for a revolutionary bid for power in October, 1934. This is forgotten abroad where there is no special reason to remember the details even of recent Spanish history. Spaniards, who have not forgotten are amused at the puritanical horror of those who were prepared to make a revolution against perfectly legal elections, but who are shocked because a section of the people and the army rose in turn against the violences of the new power, such as the murder of the Leader of the Opposition by three police officers.” (p. 10)

“The characteristic of this Liberal—the false and far the most numerous type—is his infinite fear of not appearing Liberal. […] The immense social prestige of Liberalism explains and is felt to justify this attitude. […] According to current ideas, not to be a Liberal is to be deficient in intelligence, for, as a matter of fact, a large number of men famous for their creative work were Liberals or at least had minds tinctured with Liberal toleration. Not to be Liberal signifies moreover to be “an enemy of the people,” a phrase created by the French Revolution, which still maintains all its prestige in many minds. And that means, too, not to be modern, because many conquests of civilization have been made under the banner of Liberty. But Liberty has no fixed colour. It is not a question of ideas but of conduct. What a terrible mistake to have turned it not only into a question of politics but into one of class politics!” (p.15)

“The necessity of taking account of regional characteristics in Spain has always seemed to me to be biological rather than political. Having said this I must point out that the error which has been made is to confuse the noble reality of regionalism with separatism. The national sentiment of
Spain is made up of a regional spirit which is, in its turn, an extension of the Spanish family sense. That sense, so far from being enfeebled, provides regionalism with its sap and vigour. In any village in America, no less than in Madrid or in Barcelona, Spaniards meet as representatives of provinces in their regional centres like large families which hardly rub shoulders with others. But faced with the nation in danger they all unite, animated by the same zeal and perhaps the common peril will result in creating a sort of union.” (p. 18)

“Two months before the Spanish Revolution began, I wrote in an article which appeared in several European and American newspapers that if the Spanish Popular Front, which had just been formed, failed to give to its ideology and to its action a profoundly national direction, it would provoke a rising in Spain. There was no particular merit in this prediction, for
on all hands one could observe the hostility of Spaniards in face of the notoriously Russian tactics of the pre-Revolutionary agitations, which were never sanctioned by our governments. The most important fact bearing on this, which nobody noted, was the attitude of the young people at the Universities who supplied the force of the Liberal shock movement against the dictatorship and the leaven of the agitation which paved the way for a change of regime. From the third year of the Republic it began to change its orientation […] Today 80 per cent, of the students are fighting as volunteers in the Nationalist ranks. Many of them were brought up in a Liberal environment and belonged at the outset of their studies to Liberal and even Socialist and Communist Students’ organisations. There are many young people, then almost children, whom we knew in prison during the dictatorship, who are today heroes, living or dead, of the anti-Marxist cause. What has changed them is undoubtedly the anti-Spanish character of the Popular Front propaganda.” (p. 19 -20)

The following RTVE documentary “Gregorio Marañón. Doctor, humanist and liberal” (in Spanish) was produced in 2010 by the State Society for Cultural Commemorations on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death. An occasion to get closer to a key man of our time. An eminent physician, brilliant writer, and illustrious intellectual.

 

Antonio Pérez, Spanish traitor, by Gregorio Marañón

The story of Philip II‘s Secretary of State is one of the most exciting in all of Spanish national history. Antonio Pérez (1534–1611), at the top of the Spanish Empire and on top of his personal power, decided to betray his king and his homeland.

On 28 July 1579 Antonio Pérez and the Princess of Éboli, his lover and also traitor to Philip, were arrested by order of the king. It was just the starting of a long and incredible process. On 19 April 1590, Antonio Perez fled Castille to find refuge in Aragon in a time where both kingdoms had different laws and rules. At the end, he was able to escape and exile in France and England where he survived many plots to kill him, until his dead in Paris in 1611. King Philip died in 1598; and the wife and children of Antonio Pérez, who were still imprisoned in Madrid, were set free.

Antonio Pérez heavily contributed to the Spanish black legend that has grown around Philip II by deteriorating the Spanish image with its book titled Pedaços de Historia o Relacionesprinted in England by Richard Field.

In 1947, Gregorio Marañón published a biography of Antonio Pérez and separately the same year, the documentary work Los procesos de Castilla contra Antonio Pérez (The Judicial Processes of Castile Against Antonio Pérez). Both are in Spanish and were republished in a single volume in 1970 as volume VI of its complete works. Yet, these are, probably, the most complete works documenting the life of Antonio Pérez.

This biography was translated into english in 1954 by Charles David Ley and is available to read online.

This story is far more amazing than any fictional thriller or movie based on medieval power struggles. It goes like this: political struggles, religious wars, power battles, economic struggles, sex with royals, intrigues with popes, bastards conquering kingdoms… what else? In short, everything that has already been seen in TV series and much more.

Main characters: Philip II, Juan de Austria, William of Orange, Henry IV of France, Pope Paul III, Elizabeth I, Earl of Essex, William Cecil, Duke of Alba, Alexander Farnese Duke of Parma, Pope Julius III… and many more.

The Spaniards in History, by Ramon Menendez Pidal (1950)

Translated with a prefatory essay on the author’s work by Walter Starkie, corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

In 1935, Ramon Menéndez Pidal (1869-1968) began to edit his monumental Historia de España (“History of Spain”). This work, made in 42 tomes in 65 volumes, was directed since 1975 by José María Jover Zamora. More than 400 Spanish and foreign authors have collaborated and contributed to this History of Spain.

As an introduction to volume 1, in 1947 Pidal wrote Los españoles en la Historia (The Spaniards in their history: an analysis of Spain’s national characteristics). This title was translated into English with an important change: ‘their history’ instead of ‘the History’. In his original title, Pidal meant ‘the Spaniards in the history of mankind’, which is quite different and more powerful than ‘the Spaniards in their history’.

Published as a separate book, sometimes with the addition of another essay entitled Los españoles en la literatura (The Spaniards in Literature), it was highly successful and was soon translated into several languages.

The translation here was published in London in 1950 by Walter Starkie, with a prefatory essay on Pidal’s work.

The following is a review by Samuel P. Perry, Jr., The Annals of the American Academy, 1951:

This essay is a brief analysis made by Pidal of certain Spanish intangible such as material and moral austerity (pp. 119-137), individualism (pp. 146-176), and the effects upon the individual Spaniard of centralization and regionalism (pp. 177-203). In his treatment of the Spanish individualism Pidal is careful to concentrate his thoughts upon the Spanish sense of justice, equity, and arbitrariness. His historical parallelisms are drawn from past history. This is especially true in the citation of the careful selection by Ferdinand and Isabella of administrative personnel (pp. 157-164). In brief, the choice of simple criteria lends strength to the central thesis that cultural, intellectual, and political unity is dependent upon an understanding of the historical past, as well as of the intangibles of the Spanish national character.

The central thesis is further strengthened in the author’s dispassionate consideration of the two Spains and the influence of foreign cultures upon Spanish intellectualism and the resultant ill-considered domestic intellectual censorship and isolation. Pidal himself feels inclined to reflect: The individual will again win back his right which allow him to disagree, to rectify and invent afresh, for it is to the individual that we owe all the great deeds of history. To suppress those who think differently and crush projects for what our brothers believe to be a better life, is to sin against prudence. And even in questions where one side sees itself in possession of the absolute truth as against the error of the other side, it is not right to smother all manifestations of error (as it is impossible to suppress the side itself), for then we should reach the demoralizing situation of living without any opposition, and there is no worse enemy than not to have one (p. 244).

Pidal’s documentation might have been more ample with cross references to English texts dealing with those periods of Spanish history from which the historical perspective is drawn. It is reasonable to assume that the author did not intend for this book to be considered the last word in analytical studies of national characteristics.

However, the views presented cannot be ignored in the attempt to arrive at any logical conclusion relative to the Spanish political and cultural destiny.

Read The Spaniards in their history, by Ramon Menendez Pidal online

Cervantes in England (1905)

CERVANTES IN ENGLAND

By JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY

Read January 25, 1905

In Commemoration of the Tercentenary of ‘Don Quixote

Lord Reay, Your Excellencies, and Gentlemen:

My first duty is to express to the Council and to the members of the British Academy my thanks for the distinguished honour which they have done me in inviting me to address them on this occasion of high international interest; and my second duty is to deliver to you. Lord Reay, a message from your learned brethren who form the Royal Academy of Spain. As a member of that ancient and illustrious body, desirous of associating itself with your proceedings today, it falls to me to act as its spokesman, and to convey to you its fraternal greetings as well as its grateful recognition of the prompt enthusiasm which has impelled you to take the lead in honouring the most famous literary genius that Spain can boast. You have met together here to do homage to one of the great men of the world, and to commemorate the publication of the book with which he endowed mankind just three hundred years ago. It is in strict accordance with historic tradition that you, as the official representatives of British culture, should be the first learned body in Europe to celebrate this tercentenary, and I propose to show that, since the first decade of the seventeenth century, this country has been foremost in paying tribute to an amazing masterpiece. The work has survived, no doubt, by virtue of its intrinsic and transcendent merits; but, like every other creation, it has had to struggle for existence, and it is gratifying to us to remember that British insight, British appreciation, British scholarship, and British munificence have contributed towards the speedier recognition of Cervantes’s genius. I will ask your permission, my Lord, to demonstrate this restricted thesis instead of taking you and your colleagues through the labyrinth of aesthetic criticism for which the subtle ingenuity of three centuries is responsible. But it may not be out of place to begin with a few words concerning the author of Don Quixote and the circumstances in which his romance was produced. 

Many alleged incidents in his picturesque career have afforded subjects to poets and dramatists and painters; but these are exercises in the domain of imagination, and the briefest summary of ascertained facts will be more to my purpose. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born at Alcala de Henares in 1547. The son of a humble apothecary-surgeon, without a university degree, and constantly wandering from town to town in search of patients, Cervantes cannot well have received a systematic education; but we really know nothing of his youth except that, at some date previous to 1569, he composed copies of mediocre verses dedicated to Philip the Second’s wife, Isabel de Valois. He is next heard of as chamberlain to the future Cardinal Acquaviva at Rome; thence he passed into the army, fought under Don John of Austria at Lepanto (where he received the wound in his left hand which was to be a source of greater pride to him than any of his writings), shared in the Navarino and Tunis campaigns, and, after five years of service, set sail for Spain to seek promotion. He was captured by Moorish pirates on September 26, 1575, and was carried into Algiers, where his heroic conduct won him — not only the admiration of his fellow prisoners, but — the respect of his taskmasters. After nearly five years of slavery in Algiers, during which period he wrote verses (some of which have been preserved), he was ransomed on September 19, 1580, returned to Spain, was apparently employed in Portugal, married at the end of 1584, and in the following year published the First Part of an artificial and ambitious pastoral romance, La Galatea. At this time he was writing numerous plays which, so he tells us, won popular favour; evidently they were not so successful as their author imagined in his retrospect, for in 1587 Cervantes sought and found less congenial occupation in collecting provisions for the Invincible Armada. It was ill-paid work, but it gave him bread, while literature and the drama did not. This is his first association with England, and it was no fault of his if the equipment of the Armada was not complete, for he perquisitioned with such tempestuous zeal as to incur a threat of excommunication from the ecclesiastics whose stores he seized. He remained in the public service as collector of revenues, not greatly to his own satisfaction (to judge by his application for one of four posts vacant in America), and not altogether to the satisfaction of his official superiors (to judge from the fact that he was imprisoned at Seville in 1597 for irregularities in his accounts). He was soon released, but apparently was not reinstated. We cannot wonder at this: he had not the talent for routine. 

The next six or seven years must have been the dreariest period of Cervantes’s life. He lingered on in Seville, to all seeming ruined beyond hope. But he was not embittered: ex forti dulcedo. The alchemy of his genius was now free to work, free to transmute his personal misfortunes into ore more precious than that which the Spanish argosies brought from the mines of Potosi. In the Triana and other poor quarters of Seville, he had daily opportunities of studying the originals of Gines de Pasamonte and of Rinconete and Cortadillo, two diverting picaroons who perhaps came into existence before Sancho Panza; and in Seville, from 1597 to 1603, he had time to compare the dreams of life with its realities. All unconsciously he had undergone an admirable preparation for the task which lay before him. The vicissitudes of his troubled existence constituted an inexhaustible intellectual capital. To any ordinary eye they might seem a collection of unmanageable dross, but the man of genius wields a divining-rod which leads him through the dusk to the spot where the hidden treasure lies; and so it happened with Cervantes. In the course of his long rides, collecting the King’s taxes, he had observed the personages whom he has presented so vividly as to make them real to each of us three hundred years afterwards. It is the paramount faculty of imaginative creation to force us to see through the medium of its transfiguring vision, and we have the privilege of knowing Spain in Cervantes’s transcription of it. We accompany him in those journeys across baking plains and sterile mountains and we meet the characters with whom he was familiar. We cannot doubt that he had encountered innkeepers who could cap a quotation from an ancient ballad, and who delighted in the incredible adventures of Cirongilio of Thrace or of Felixmarte of Hircania; demure Toledan silk-mercers on the road to Murcia, with their sunshades up to protect them against the heat; barbers who preferred Galaor to his more famous brother Amadis of Gaul, and who were pleased to have Ariosto on their shelves even though they could not read him; Benedictine monks peering through their travelling spectacles from the backs of mules as tall as dromedaries; canons far better acquainted with the romances of chivalry than with Villalpando’s treatise on logic; amorous and noble youths from Aragon, disguised as muleteers; and perhaps a poor oldfashioned gentleman who in some solitary hamlet pored and pored over tales of chivalrous deeds till he persuaded himself that he was born to repeat these exploits and to restore the golden age — that happy time when maleficent giants were neatly divided at the waist by knights whose hearts were pure, and who themselves avoided similar inconveniences by timely recourse to Fierabras’s inestimable balsam, two drops of which joined to a nicety the severed halves of a bisected paladin. 

The time was coming when these casual acquaintances, embellished by the sunniest humour and most urbane irony, were to find place in Cervantes’s rich portrait-gallery and were to be his glory as well as our delight. While he was giving artistic form to his reminiscences as chamberlain, soldier, slave, poet, romancer, dramatist, tax-gatherer, and broken wanderer, his knowledge of life was continually extending. The Treasury was constantly upon his track. What actually took place is somewhat obscure: Cervantes was (probably) imprisoned once more in 1598 and (almost certainly) again in 1601-2. It may have been in Seville jail that he began to write what he describes as a story ‘full of thoughts of all sorts and such as never came into any other imagination — just what might be begotten in a prison, where every misery is lodged and every doleful sound makes its dwelling.’ What is certain is that early in 1603 he was ordered to appear before the Exchequer Court there to produce his vouchers and explain his confused accounts. It was the most fortunate thing that could have happened to him. We may be tolerably sure that the loose bookkeeping which had perplexed the Treasury clerks for years was not made clear in an instant, and that Cervantes’s examination was prolonged over a considerable period; and it seems likely that, on one of his journeys to and fro between Seville and Valladolid, he disposed of a manuscript which had passed through many hands before it found a publisher. This was the manuscript of Don Quixote. 

The internal evidence of the book shows that Cervantes began hesitatingly and tentatively, intending to write a comparatively short story about a simple-hearted country-gentleman, mooning his years away in some secluded hamlet till his craze for chivalrous adventures led him into absurd situations which invited description in a spirit of broad farce. The opening words of the sixth chapter — El qual dormia — are awkwardly carried on from the fifth chapter, and they go to show that no division of material was originally contemplated. Moreover, we may say with some confidence that the existence of the accomplished Sancho Panza is the result of an afterthought; the idea probably occurred to Cervantes just after penning the innkeeper’s statement that knights were commonly attended by squires. And it is curious to remark that the author fails at first to visualize the figure of Sancho Panza; he falters in the attempt to draw the short, ventripotent rustic, and as late as the ninth chapter describes him as tall and long-shanked. A long-shanked Sancho! One would have said that such a being was inconceivable had not his creator first seen him in that strange form. 

The writer’s primary aim was to parody a class of literature which, though no longer so much appreciated at court as in the days of Juan de Valdes, or at the time when it seemed natural to call California after the griffin-haunted island in Las Sergas de Esplandian still had its admirers in the provinces; and the parody is wholly admirable. But a mere parodist, as such, courts and even condemns himself to oblivion, and, almost necessarily, the more complete his success, the sooner he is forgotten by all save students: the books which he ridicules perish, and the burlesque dies with them. The very fact that Don Quixote survives is proof that it outgrew the author’s intention. Cervantes himself informs us that his book is, ‘from beginning to end, an attack upon the romances of chivalry,’ and we have no reason to justify us in rejecting this statement. Still we must interpret it in relation to other matters. Cervantes can never have meant to destroy so excellent an example of the feudal prose epic as Amadis de Gaula, a long romance which he must have known almost by heart: for in the twentieth chapter he draws attention to the minute circumstance that the taciturn Gasabel, the squire of Galaor, ‘ is only named once in the whole of that history, as long as it is truthful.’ And no man charges his memory with precise details of what he considers a mass of grotesque extravagances, of egotistical folly, and vapouring rant. The extravagances, the folly, and the rant which disfigure the works of such writers as Feliciano de Silva are destroyed for ever. What was sound and wholesome in the tales of chivalry is preserved in Don Quixote: preserved, illuminated, and ennobled by a puissant imagination playing upon a marvellously rich experience. 

The Manchegan madman has his delusions, but he is deluded on one point only: in all other respects he touches the realities of life and he remains a perpetual model of conduct, dignified in disaster, magnanimous in victory, keen in perception, subtle in argument, wise in counsel. With him goes, as a foil to heroism, Sancho Panza, that embodiment of calculating cowardice, malicious humour, and prosaic common sense. This association of the man abounding in ideas with the slower-witted, vulgar, practical person, vaguely recalls the partnership of Peisthetairos and Euelpides; and Aristophanes himself has no happier touch than that which exhibits Sancho Panza, aware that his master is too mad to be depended on in any other matter, but yet convinced that he may certainly be trusted to provide the unnamed nebulous island which the shrewd, droll villager feels a statesmanlike vocation to govern. Can we wonder that the appearance of this enchanting pair was hailed with delight when the history of their sallies was published at Madrid early in 1605? We know that it was ‘the book of the year,’ that within some six months there were pirated editions in Portugal, a second edition in Madrid, a provincial edition at Valencia, and that by June people in Valladolid spoke of the adventurous knight and his squire as though both were proverbial characters. Other contemporary novels — Guzman de Alfarache, for instance — may have had a larger circulation; but the picaroon Guzman was (by comparison) merely the comet of a season, while the renown of the Ingenious Gentleman is more universal today than it has ever been. His fame soon spread beyond the Pyrenees, and in 1607 a Brussels publisher reprinted the original to meet the demands of the Spaniards in the Low Countries. The book was thus brought within reach of readers in the north of Europe, and they lost no time in profiting by their opportunity. There are signs of Don Quixote in France as early as 1608, but we may neglect them today, more especially as there are still earlier traces of the book in this country. 

We read of Richard Coeur-de-Lion helping to defend Santarem against the Moors, of the Black Prince’s battles in Spain, of two or three thousand English pilgrims yearly visiting the shrine of Santiago de Compostela. But the literary connexion between the Peninsula and England was slight. Early in the fifteenth century Clemente Sanchez de Vercial translated Odo of Cheriton’s Narrationes under the title of El libro de los gatos; the Speculum Laicorum, an adaptation of Odo of Cheriton’s work commonly ascribed to John Hoveden, was translated into Spanish at about the same period; then too Gower’s Confessio Amantis was translated into Portuguese by Robert Payne, Canon of Lisbon, and, later, into Spanish by Juan de Cuenca; and the distinguished poet Francisco Imperial introduces English words into his verses. These few examples imply no great acquaintance with English literature, and we may say that there was practically no knowledge of Spanish literature in England till the beginning of the sixteenth century, when, in the year following the publication of Amadis de Gaula, Henry the Eighth married Catharine of Aragon. Spanish scholars visited London and Oxford, and though, as in the case of Vives, they may have censured some of the most popular Spanish books of the time, intercourse with them must naturally have awakened interest in the literature of their country. The results were seen in Lord Bemers’s renderings of works by Fernandez de San Pedro and Guevara, and Guevara found other translators in the persons of Bryan, North, Fenton, and Hellowes. Santillana was done into English by Barnabe Googe, who had already given versions of poems by Montemayor, Boscan, and Garcilaso de la Vega; Abraham Fraunce quoted the two latter poets in The Arcadian Rhetorike, Sidney versified songs by Montemayor, and there are translations of such devout writers as Luis de Granada. With histories, technical works and the like, I am not concerned here. It is more to our purpose to note that Amadis de Gaula was translated by Anthony Munday in 1589-95, and that it pleased readers to identify Gaula with Wales and to discover in the romance places so familiar to them as London, Windsor, and Bristol. Part of an earlier version by Lord Lennox exists in manuscript. 

The ground was thus prepared for Cervantes, and the new parody of knight-errantry was certain to charm those who regretted that Chaucer’s tale of Sir Thopas had been so brusquely interrupted. In the very year that the Brussels edition made Don Quixote more easily available a translation of the book was begun by Thomas Shelton, finished in forty days, and then laid aside for four or five years; and that there were other more or less attentive readers of Don Quixote is shown by many passages in contemporary authors — passages which have been collected by investigators like Emil Koeppel. George Wilkins, though possibly responsible for the rough sketches elaborated by a far greater artist into Timon of Athens and Pericles, is not precisely a writer of impressive independence and originality: rather, indeed, is he one whose eyes are constantly on the weathercock, watching the direction of the popular breeze. It is therefore all the more significant that in the third act of The Miseries of Inforst Marriage, a play given in 1607, Wilkins should make the tipsy braggart William Scarborow say: 

Boy, bear the torch fair: now am I armed to fight with a windmill, and to take the wall of an emperor. 

‘To fight with a windmill!’ The expression betrays its source; it would be unmeaning to any one unacquainted with the eighth chapter in which Cervantes describes Don Quixote’s terrible adventure with the giants whom the wizard Friston had transformed into windmills upon the plain leading to Puerto Lapice. Wilkins was not the man to write above the heads of his audiences, and he clearly believed that they would catch the point of the allusion. The experiment was evidently successful, for, in the following year, Middleton repeated it in the fourth act of Your Fair Gallants presenting Pyamont exasperated at the loss of his forty pounds and furiously declaring:

I could fight with a windmill now. 

A year or two passes and (probably about 1610) Ben Jonson in the fourth act of The Epicene causes Truewit to address Sir Dauphine Eugenie in these terms:  

You must leave to live in your chamber, then, a month together upon Amadis de Gaul, or Don Quixote, as you are wont. 

Manifestly the knight’s reputation was made, for within three years he took rank as the equal of his great predecessor, Amadis de Gaula, whose penance on the Pena Pobre (a locality which has been identified with the island of Jersey) he had imitated with such gusto on the Sierra Morena. That the reference was seized by the public is plain from its repetition next year by the same dramatist in the fourth act of The Alchemist, where Kastril vilifies Drugger as

a pimp and a trig.
And an Amadis de Gaul, or a Don Quixote. 

To about this date (1611) is assigned the composition of Fletcher’s Coxcomb and Nathaniel Field’s Amends for Ladies, which are both based upon the story of the Curious Impertinent interpolated in Chapters XXXIII-XXXV of Don Quixote. You may perhaps remember that Lothario compares Anselmo’s wife, Camila, to ‘a diamond of the first water, whose excellence and purity had satisfied all the lapidaries that had seen it.’ Field preserves the simile in one of the speeches allotted to Sir John Love-all:  

To the unskilful owner’s eyes alike
The Bristow sparkles as the diamond.
But by a lapidary the truth is found. 

This same episode of the Curious Impertinent, which Lessing and other critics have found tedious, furnished the theme of The Second Maid’s Tragedy, a play variously ascribed to Goughe, to Chapman, to Shakespeare, and— with more probability — to Massinger and Tourneur: and here again the simile of the virtuous woman and the diamond is reproduced. Shelton’s translation was printed in 1612, and was speedily followed by a very frank adaptation of Don Quixote in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Fletcher makes no attempt to disguise the source of his piece: but it is amusing to observe his anxiety to assure his public that he knows Spanish too well to need Shelton’s rendering, and that in fact his play had been completed a year before the prose version was published. In 1613 Robert Anton closes his Moriomachia with a reference to ‘ Mambrinoes inchaunted helmet ‘; and both the knight and the squire are mentioned later in Drayton’s Nimphidia. 

This record is not meagre; but, since the ascription to Shakespeare of The Second Maid’s Tragedy is no longer maintained by any competent scholar, one mighty name is missing from the bederoll. Did Shakespeare know Don Quixote? The question is constantly asked, and the usual answer is that he could not have read the book because he knew no Spanish. I am reminded of the advice given to a newly appointed judge whose knowledge of law was rusty: ‘ Give your decision and it may be right; never give your reasons, for they are sure to be wrong.’ I do not dwell on the passage in Much Ado About Nothing which recalls Lazarillo de Tormes, nor on the points of resemblance between Montemayor’s Diana and the Two Gentlemen of Verona: they do not necessarily imply a knowledge of Spanish. But it is certain that Shakespeare might easily have known Don Quixote without knowing Spanish, for Shelton’s version was in print four years before Shakespeare died. Apart from this, however, the longer one lives the more chary one becomes of committing oneself to absolute statements as to what Shakespeare did, or did not, know. He may not have been an expert in Spanish: probably he was not. But he seems to have known enough to read a collection of dull stories published at Pamplona in 1609, and at Antwerp in 1610. This volume, never translated (so far as is known) into any other language, is the Noches de lnvierno of Antonio de Eslava, and the title of A Winter’s Tale is obviously taken from the title of the Spanish book. This, if it stood alone, might be explained away as an instance of unconscious reminiscence. However, as we have lately learned — from Dr. Garnett, amongst others — Shakespeare’s debt to Spain goes much beyond the mere borrowing of a title: for, from the fourth chapter of the Primera Noche de Invierno comes the plot of The Tempest, Prospero of Milan and his daughter Miranda being substituted for Dardano of Bulgaria and his daughter Serafina. All things considered, perhaps we should not dismiss too cavalierly a belated entry in the register of the Stationers’ Company: ‘ The History of Cardenio by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare, 20s.’ The lateness of the date (1653) deprives this entry of authority, and, as the play has vanished, it is impossible to discuss the question of its attribution; but we may plausibly conjecture that Shakespeare, or some younger contemporary, found material for yet another drama in the story told to Don Quixote by the tattered, distraught Andalusian gentleman whom he met wandering near the Venta de Cardenas on the northern slope of the Sierra Morena. 

Meanwhile, though the presses of Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries continued to issue reprints of the original in 1608, 1610, and 1611 respectively, the author was in no haste to publish the continuation mentioned at the end of the First Part. There we are told that an academician of Argamasilla had succeeded in deciphering certain parchments containing Castilian verses, ‘ and that he means to publish them in hopes of Don Quixote’s third sally.’ The promise is vague, and, such as it is, the pious aspiration is perhaps neutralized by a final ambiguous verse from the Orlando furioso:  

Forse altri cantera con miglior plettro. 

These concluding sentences have given rise to so much controversy that I shall be justified in dwelling upon them for a moment. If we consider the text and the quotation from Ariosto together, the passage may be taken to mean that any one who chose was welcome to continue the story, or it may be construed as an announcement of Cervantes’s intention to publish a sequel himself. Now, in view of what happened afterwards, the significance of these phrases may seem obvious; but we are not entitled to interpret them solely in the light of subsequent events. The questions for us to answer are two: what did Cervantes intend to convey when he wrote the passage? and what interpretation might his contemporaries fairly put upon it? If he meant that any other writer was free to publish a continuation of Don Quixote,  he had no cause for complaint when he was taken at his word. If he meant that he himself would issue the sequel, it is unfortunate that he did not say so with his customary plainness, and strange that he delayed so long in following up his triumph. 

It was not till 1613, more than eight years after the appearance of the First Part, that he publicly announced the sequel as forthcoming. Any honourable man who was already engaged upon a continuation would have laid his work aside and left the original author in possession of the field. Unluckily the idea of continuing Don Quixote had occurred to an unscrupulous writer. It is no easy task to be just, in this matter, to Cervantes and to his competitor; for, while Cervantes is, so to say, the personal friend of each man amongst us, his obscure rival has contrived to lose the respect of the whole world. But it is our duty to attempt it. In the first place, then, let us bear in mind that Cervantes was often almost as optimistic as Don Quixote; the conception of a book flashed into his brain, and he looked upon the composition as a mere detail. In this very prologue which announces the Second Part of Don Quixote, Cervantes announces two other books: Los Trabajos de Persies y Sigismunda, which appeared posthumously, and Las Semanas del Jardin, which never appeared at all. Elsewhere he promises works to be entitled, El Engano a las ojos and Bernardo, and these never appeared either. During thirty-one years, on five separate occasions, he promised the sequel to La Galatea, and that also never appeared. It has been argued that, in announcing the sequel to Don Quixote, Cervantes is fairly categorical; he promises it ‘ shortly ‘ (con brevedad). He undoubtedly does; but the words are of evil omen, for he used the same formula when he first promised the continuation of La Galatea. In the second place, we cannot infer (as we might in the case of a punctilious precisian who weighed his words carefully) that the Second Part of Don Quixote was nearly completed when Cervantes referred to it in the preface to his Novelas exemplares, which was licensed on July 2, 1612. Far from it! He may not have written even a chapter of it at that date; he had not written half of it on July 20, 1614, the memorable day on which the newly fledged Governor, Sancho Panza, dictated his letter to his wife Teresa. It follows that, if Cervantes worked at anything like a uniform rate of speed, he cannot have begun the sequel till about January, 1614. 

These circumstances, more or less attenuating, should be taken into consideration before passing sentence on Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, who, in 1614, brought out a spurious continuation of Don Quixote, a clever, coarse performance, which, especially in Le Sage’s expanded version, has often been mistaken — by Pope, for instance, in the Essay on Criticism — for the authentic sequel, Avellaneda had a fair, or at least a plausible, case; but he completely ruined it by the ribaldry of his preface, in which he jeers at Cervantes’s misfortunes and alleged defects of character — his mutilation, his imprisonment, his poverty, his stammer, his jealousy, his lack of friends. These brutalities wounded Cervantes to the soul, and led him to conclude the Second Part of Don Quixote in all haste. Thus, quite unintentionally, the insolent railer probably saved the book from the fate which befell the sequel to La Galatea, and the other works already mentioned. Avellaneda deserves our ironical congratulations: he meant murder, but committed suicide. 

Within a year of his intrusion the genuine continuation of Don Quixote was published, and it amply disproved the truth of Sanson Carrasco’s remark: ‘Second Parts are never good.’ Goethe and Hallam preferred the First Part, and unquestionably the Second is but a splendid development of what preceded it. Coleridge draws a characteristic distinction: ‘Who can have courage to attempt a reversal of the judgement of all criticism against continuations? Let us except Don Quixote, however, although the Second Part of that transcendent work is not exactly uno flatu with the original conception.’ The First Part is the more humorous and fantastic, the Second Part is the more ingenious and artistic; but nobody has ever contended that this Second Part was ‘not good,’ with the single exception of Lamb, who was betrayed into this freakish outburst: ‘Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part, with the confederacies of that unworthy Duke and most contemptible Duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding.’ ‘Sacrificed his instinct to his understanding!’ It may amount to a confession of ineptitude, but I confess I am not nearly so sure as I could wish to be that I catch the precise meaning of this expression, and I prefer not to take it too seriously. It occurs in a letter addressed to Southey, and perhaps not even the most judicial of us would care to abide by every word let fall in the careless freedom of private correspondence. At any rate posterity has not accepted Lamb’s emphatic verdict. Nor did the writer’s contemporaries and immediate successors find anything but praise for the story of Don Quixote’s later exploits. 

Cervantes lived just long enough to witness his triumph, and he needed all the solace that it could give him. Old and infirm, he was eclipsed in popular favour by the more dazzling and versatile genius of Lope de Vega, then in the meridian of his glory. We must distinguish between fame and popularity. Famous Cervantes was both in and out of Spain; he was not, like Lope, the idol of his countrymen. The greatest of all Spaniards, in life more than in death, Cervantes’s appeal was rather universal than national. He had survived most of his own generation, lived into a less heroic time, and, though he was no philosopher or sociologist, perhaps viewed with some misgivings the new society which had replaced the age of chivalry. 

He look’d on the rushing decay
Of the times which had shelter’d his youth
Felt the dissolving throes
Of a social order he loved
Outlived his brethren, his peers;
And, like the Theban seer.
Died in his enemies’ day. 

He died, in fact, on April 23, 1616 — nominally on the same day as Shakespeare, and we ask for nothing better than to be allowed to forget the difference between the calendars of Spain and England, and, adapting Homer, to say that in both countries the sun perished out of heaven at the same hour. 

Before long the Second Part of Don Quixote reached England in the Brussels edition of 1616. Probably the earliest trace of it occurs about 1619 in the fifth act of The Double Marriage, where Fletcher and Massinger introduce a scene between the courtier Castruccio and the doctor which is unmistakably modelled after the account in the forty-seventh chapter of Pedro Recio de Agüero’s attempt to deprive Sancho Panza of his dinner. In 1620 the sequel to Don Quixote was brought directly before the English public in Shelton’s translation, and in this same year Thomas May, in the first act of The Heir, after making Clarimont refer to ‘the unjust disdain of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso,’ describes Amadis de Gaula and Don Quixote as ‘ brave men whom neither enchantments, giants, windmills, nor flocks of sheep, could vanquish.’ This, of course, is from the First Part; but in 1620 Fletcher inserted one detail from the Second Part in The Pilgrim, and, in 1623, the second act of Massinger’s play The Duke of Milan reveals Mariana taunting her sister-in-law Marcelia with suffering from an issue: a reminiscence of the scandal about the Duchess confided to Don Quixote’s reluctant ear by Dona Rodriguez in the forty-eighth chapter of the Second Part. 

In the third decade of the seventeenth century writers in search of a theme sought it oftener in the Novelas exemplares than in Don Quixote. For instance, in 1621-2 Middleton and Rowley based The Spanish Gipsie on La Gitanilla and La Fuerza de la Sangre. A more assiduous follower of Cervantes was Fletcher, who in 1619 derived The Queen of Corinth from La Fuerza de la Sangre; in 1621, collaborating with Massinger, Fletcher based A Very Woman on El Amante liberal; in 1622 he inserted in The Beggars’ Bush some touches from La Gitanilla; in 1623, perhaps aided once more by Massinger, he produced Love’s Pilgrimage from Las dos Doncellas; in 1624 El Casamiento enganoso yielded him Rule a Wife and have a Wife; in 1625-6 he transformed La Ilustre Fregona into The Fair Maid of the Inn; in 1628 he went afield to take The Custom of the Country from Cervantes’s posthumous romance, Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda; but he returned later to the Novelas exemplares and dramatized La Senora Cornelia as The Chances. A still more convincing proof of English interest concerning Cervantes’s writings is afforded by the fact that Massinger in 1624 wrote The Renegade in view of the set drama entitled Los Banos de Argel, and The Fatal Dowry in 1632 showed a knowledge of the entremes entitled El Viejo celoso. It was comparatively easy for Fletcher to read the Novelas exemplares in the Brussels edition of 1614; but, as the volume of plays issued by Cervantes in 1615 was not reprinted till 1749, it is evident that Massinger must have taken the trouble to procure a copy of the Madrid princeps—a difficult matter at that date. 

This fashion ran its course, as you may read in the Master of Peterhouse’s admirable History of English Dramatic Literature; and, in due time, English writers went back to Don Quixote. In 1630 Davenant printed The Cruel Brother, borrowing from Cervantes the name of one personage and the characteristics of another:  

Signior
Lothario; a Country Gentleman
But now the Court Baboone, who persuades himselfe
(Out of a new kind of madness) to be
The Duke’s favourite. He comes. Th’ other is
A bundle of proverbs, whom he seduc’d
From the plough, to serve him for preferment. 

In 1635 an allusion to the ‘good knight of the ill favor’d Countenance’ is used to ornament the third act of The Lady Mother by Henry Glapthorne, a dramatist of no great repute, whose Wit in a Constable, published four years afterwards, contains Clare’s intimidating question to Sir Timothy Shallowwit:  

Is it you,
Sir Knight of the ill favor’ d face,
That would have me for your Dulcinea? 

In 1640 appeared James Mabbe’s fragmentary version of the Novelas exemplares which Godwin esteemed as ‘perhaps the most perfect specimen of prose in the English language.’ It is enough to call it admirable. But let me say frankly that I have two grudges against Mabbe: one because he omits six of the novels, perhaps the best in the collection: the other because, though he resided in Madrid from 1611 to 1613 as a member of Digby’s mission, he apparently took no trouble to meet Cervantes and gives us no information concerning him. Surely this is one of those rare cases in which all but the most austere of men would welcome a little ‘personal’ journalism. 

‘I have almost forgot my Spanish, but after a little may recover it,’ says Riches in Shirley’s masque A Contention for Honour and Riches, which dates from 1632; and perhaps Riches here speaks for the modest author. However that may be, Shirley knew enough Spanish to utilize Tirso de Molina in his Opportunity and Lope de Vega in The Young Admiral; hence it is not surprising that, when recasting his masque in 1652 under the title of Honoria and Mammon, he should introduce the ‘forehead of Dulcinea of Toboso ‘ into the fifth act. The Double Falsehood, based on Cardenio’s story and ascribed by Lewis Theobald to Shakespeare, has been conjecturally attributed to Shirley; but this is doubtful. During the Protectorate the only contribution specially interesting to the student of Cervantes is the curious, festive commentary by Gayton whose Pleasant Notesupon Don Quixote are still well worth reading. The Restoration was barely accomplished when in 1663 Butler launched the first part of Hudibras, a witty, pointed, violent lampoon written in imitation of Cervantes, but with blustering humour and rancorous jibes substituted for the serene grace and bland satire of the master. In 1671 Aphra Behn’s play The Amorous Prince showed how much that was objectionable could be infused into the story of the Curious Impertinent, but Aphra Behn was outdone in 1694 and 1696 by D’Urfey whose Comical History of Don Quixote provoked Collier’s famous Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. It is one of life’s ironies that this fulminating protest should have been called forth by a work professedly derived from Cervantes who justly prided himself on the morality of his writings. 

D’Urfey was left to bear the burden of his sins: Cervantes’s vogue in England continued unchecked. Temple proclaimed Don Quixote to be, as satire, ‘the best and highest strain that ever has been, or will be, reached by that vein.’ Spence tells us that Orford’s inquiry whether Rowe knew Spanish led the latter to study the language, perhaps in the hope that it might lead to the Embassy at Madrid. Having mastered Spanish, Rowe announced the fact to Orford who drily said: ‘Then, sir, I envy you the pleasure of reading Don Quixote in the original.’ And no doubt Rowe did read it, and hence a line in The Fair Penitent which use has converted into a tag:  

Is this that haughty, gallant, gay Lothario? 

Addison gave a somewhat lukewarm allegiance to Cervantes in The Whig Examiner (No. 3) and in The Guardian (No. 135), as well as in The Spectator (Nos. 227 and 249), linking Don Quixote with Hudibras, and talking (not very acutely) of ‘mean Persons in the Accoutrements of Heroes.’ Steele did better when he promoted ‘the accomplish’d Spaniard’ to be patron of the Set of Sighers in the University of Oxford. In 1719 Arbuthnot unsuccessfully attempted to imitate Don Quixote in his short Life and Adventures of Don Bilioso de l’Estomac. Some biographers of Swift suggest that A Tale of a Tub is modelled upon Don Quixote; I see no trace of direct imitation, and nothing could be further apart than the Englishman’s splenetic gloom and the Spaniard’s delicate charm, but I admit that the unadorned diction and sustained irony of Swift recalls one of Cervantes’s many manners. 

A passage in the Characteristics of the third Earl of Shaftesbury is worth quoting: ‘Had I been a Spanish Cervantes and, with success equal to that comic Author, had destroyed the reigning taste of Gothic or Moorish Chivalry, I could afterwards contentedly have seen my burlesque itself despised and set aside.’ This utterance is interesting, for it implies that in 1703 Cervantes was still considered to be essentially a ‘comic Author.’ But a reference in The Dunciad to ‘Cervantes’s serious air’ shows that Pope had a truer insight into the significance of a book which, as I have already said, he began by reading in Le Sage’s amplification of Avellaneda. Henceforward, Cervantes becomes less and less regarded as a purely ‘comic Author.’ As far back as 1730 Fielding in the second act of The Coffee-House Politician declared that ‘the greatest part of Mankind labour under one delirium or another, and Don Quixote differed from the rest, not in Madness, but the species of it.’ Fielding’s play Don Quixote in England dates from 1734 and, poor as it is, it is a tribute to a great predecessor, a tribute paid more abundantly eight years later in the History and Adventures of Joseph Andrews where Parson Adams appears as an unmistakable descendant of Don Quixote’s. The Female Quixote, an imitation by Charlotte Lennox which was published in 1752, is praised by Fielding in the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, and was lauded by Samuel Johnson, who thought that Cervantes’s book had no superior but the Iliad. Sterne ranked Cervantes even above his other favourite, Rabelais, but we should have guessed this without Sterne’s personal assurance, for page after page of Tristram Shandy is redolent of Don Quixote. Though the title of The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves proves that Smollett had the Spanish book in view, the imitation is wholly unworthy of the model, and in The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker the resemblance which we are told existed between Lieutenant Lismahago and the Knight of La Mancha is merely physical. Smollett’s imitative fiction is comparatively a failure but, as I shall show in an instant, he was a warm admirer of Don Quixote, and did Cervantes good service in another field. To that field I shall now turn, for The Spiritual Quixote of Richard Graves, published in 1773, and similar productions of this period have lost whatever interest they may once have had. 

During the eighteenth century there were numerous attempts in England to promote the serious study of Cervantes’s works by means which cannot fail to interest a learned audience. We have seen that the earliest translation of the First Part of Don Quixote was published at London in 1612 by Shelton: Shelton’s version of both parts was reprinted in 1731, and was also issued in a revised form by Captain John Stevens in 1700 and 1706. In 1687, Milton’s nephew, John Philips, had published a miserable travesty of the original, and in 1700 the French refugee, Peter Motteux, brought out a readable version, which is based on Shelton’s rendering, and checked by constant comparison with the French translation of Filleau de Saint-Martin. Motteux’ version, which included the earliest biographical sketch of Cervantes, is still reprinted, less on account of its own merits than because of the excellent preface which Lockhart wrote for it in 1822. But it was felt that these publications were unworthy of English scholarship. As Shelton was the first man to translate Don Quixote, so a London publisher, Jacob Tonson, was the first to produce a handsome edition of the original, which put to shame the sorry reprints issued in Spain and elsewhere. Tonson’s edition, published in 1738, was based upon the Brussels reimpressions of 1607 and 1611, was revised by Pedro de Pineda, and was preceded by the first formal biography of Cervantes ever issued. This life was written by the most eminent Spanish scholar of the age, Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, who received the commission from the English ex-Secretary of State, Lord Carteret. In 1742 the painter, Charles Jervas, published a new rendering of Don Quixote, in some important respects an advance on previous versions. Spence records Pope’s perfidious remark that his friend Jervas ‘translated Don Quixote without understanding Spanish.’ The charge is absurd: Jervas’s knowledge of Spanish is beyond cavil. His English style is thought inadequate by critics, and his rendering is neglected by his later rivals; but innumerable cheap reproductions prove that it satisfies a multitude of less exacting readers. Jervas’s version was likewise of great service to Smollett who utilized it extensively when engaged upon the translation which he issued in 1755; and the preface to this translation is exceptionally interesting, for here Smollett pointed out, six years before the point had occurred to any Spaniard, that the prisoner Cervantes, mentioned as a native of Alcala de Henares in Diego de Haedo’s Topografia e Historia de Argel, must be the author of Don Quixote. This detail, which was also made public at about the same time by Colonel Windham, practically settled the dispute as to Cervantes’s birthplace, A far more valuable contribution to students of Cervantes was the first commentary on Don Quixote ever published: this was issued in 1781 by John Bowie, vicar of Idmiston, who has done more to elucidate Cervantes’s masterpiece than any other commentator, with the possible exception of Clemencin. Envy and detraction did their worst in Barretti’s venomous Tolondron; but in vain, for all the world over ‘Don Bowie,’ as his friends affectionately called him, is held in honour by every student of Spanish literature. 

With the last century we reach ground familiar to all. It would be an endless and superfluous task to trace the allusions to Cervantes’s great book in English literature of the nineteenth century. Byron tells us in Don Juan that Adeline, like Rowe, 

studied Spanish
To read Don Quixote in the original,
A pleasure before which all others vanish. 

And her example was widely followed. Yet we may take it as certain that imperfect translations suggested the characters of Sam Weller, that Cockney variant of Sancho Panza, and of Colonel Thomas Newcome. ‘They call him Don Quixote in India,’ said General Sir Thomas de Boots, ‘I suppose you have read Don Quixote? ‘ Never heard of it, upon my word,’ replied Barnes Newcome, whose only contribution to literature was a Lecture on the Poetry of the Affections. But Hazlitt had heard of Don Quixote, and Southey, Scott, Lockhart, Macaulay, and FitzGerald knew the original well. Macaulay esteemed it ‘the best novel in the world, beyond all comparison,’ and found it even ‘prodigiously superior to what I had imagined,’ while to FitzGerald it became ‘ the Book.’ I believe that it is included in the Bibliotheque Positiviste, and that Comte placed Cervantes himself in the Positivist Calendar. We have not yet made Cervantes our national saint, but no one has written more delightfully of him than that distinguished Positivist, Mr. Frederic Harrison; and the greatest of our romance writers, Mr. George Meredith, celebrates with enthusiasm Cervantes’s ‘loftiest moods of humour, fusing the tragic sentiment with the comic narrative.’ The publication of three new and independent versions by Duffield, Ormsby, and Watts, in 1881, 1885, and 1888 respectively, is convincing proof of our unabated interest in Don Quixote. Two large quarto volumes — quorum pars parva fui — containing the first critical edition of the original appeared at the very end of the nineteenth century, and, if they indicate nothing else, at least imply a boundless belief in the future of Hhe Book’; and the only satisfactory rendering of the Novelas exemplares, due to Mr. Norman MacColl whom death has so recently snatched from us, figures in a translation of Cervantes’s Complete Works which was begun in the first year of the twentieth century. 

This brings my prolix exposition to a close. I have laid before you a body of facts to justify the assertions with which I began. I have shown that England was the first foreign country to mention Don Quixote, the first to translate the book, the first country in Europe to present it decently garbed in its native tongue, the first to indicate the birthplace of the author, the first to provide a biography of him, the first to publish a commentary on Don Quixote, and the first to issue a critical edition of the text. I have shown that during three centuries English literature teems with significant allusions to the creations of Cervantes’s genius, that the greatest English novelists are among his disciples, and that English poets, dramatists, scholars, critics, agreed upon nothing else, are unanimous and fervent in their admiration of him. ‘There is an everlasting undercurrent of murmur about his name, the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they.’ That, Lord Reay, is my case: it is for you and your colleagues in the British Academy to judge if I have proved it. 

The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Balthasar Gracian

Balthasar Gracian (Baltasar Gracián y Morales, S.J. 8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658), was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher.

His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The former translated the Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (The Art of Worldly Wisdom) into German, and considered the book “absolutely unique… a book made for constant use… a companion for life” for “those who wish to prosper in the great world.” The second wrote of the Oráculo, “Europe has never produced anything finer or more complicated in matters of moral subtlety”

A translation of the Oráculo manual from the Spanish by Joseph Jacobs (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited), first published in 1892, was a huge commercial success, with many reprintings over the years. Jacobs’s translation is alleged to have been read by Winston Churchill, seven years later, on the ship taking him to the Boer Wars.

In Paris, in 1924, a revision and reprint of the translation into French by Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaie, with a preface by André Rouveyre, attracted a wide readership there, and was admired by André Gide. A new translation by Christopher Maurer (New York: Doubleday) became a national bestseller in the U.S. in 1992 , and the English edition, which sold almost 200,000 copies, was translated into Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and many other languages.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

However, Baltasar Gracián is not included in the Western canon. The body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that is highly valued in the West ignores Spanish culture at least since 1648, after the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’s War, in the struggles and wars to end the Spanish empire.

Gracián, jointly with Quevedo, is the most representative writer of the Spanish Baroque literary style known as Conceptismo (Conceptism), of which he was the most important theoretician: his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Wit and the Art of Inventiveness) is at once a poetic, a rhetoric and an anthology of the conceptist style.

Read online all of Baltasar Gracián’s 300 aphorisms: The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian, 1647 (translated by Christopher Maurer in 1992)

Read it online in the original in Spanish Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia.

Juan Luis Vives: On Assistance to the Poor

(From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Juan Luis Vives was born in Valencia, Spain on March 6, 1493 (not 1492, as is often found in the literature on him). His parents were Jewish cloth merchants who had converted to Catholicism and who strove to live with the insecurities of their precarious situation. His father, Luis Vives Valeriola (1453–1524), had been prosecuted in 1477 for secretly practicing Judaism. A second trial took place in 1522 and ended two years later when he was burned at the stake. His mother, Blanquina March (1473–1508), became a Christian in 1491, one year before the decree expelling Jews from Spain. She died in 1508 of the plague. Twenty years after her death, she was charged with having visited a clandestine synagogue. Her remains were exhumed and publicly burned.

In his youth, Vives attended the Estudio General of his hometown. In 1509, he moved to Paris and enrolled as a freshman in the faculty of arts. He was never to return to Spain. Vives began his studies at the Collège de Lisieux, where Juan Dolz had just started a triennial course, but soon moved to the Collège de Beauvais, where he attended the lectures of Jan Dullaert (d.1513). From the fall of 1512, Vives started to attend the course of the Aragonese Gaspar Lax (1487–1560) at the Collège de Montaigu. Through Nicolas Bérault (c.1470–c.1545), who was an associate of Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) and taught at various colleges in Paris, Vives also came into contact with the Parisian humanist circle.

In 1514, Vives left Paris without having taken any formal academic degree and moved to the Low Countries. He settled in Bruges, where he would spend most of his life. About this time, he was introduced to Erasmus and appointed as tutor to the Flemish nobleman William of Croy. From 1517 until Croy’s premature death in 1521, Vives lived in Louvain and taught at the Collegium Trilingue, a humanist foundation based on Erasmian educational principles. In this period he wrote ‘Fabula de homine’ (‘A Fable about Man,’ 1518), an early version of his views on the nature and purpose of mankind; De initiis, sectis et laudibus philosophiae (On the Origins, Schools and Merits of Philosophy, 1518), a short essay on the history of philosophy; In pseudodialecticos (Against the Pseudo-Dialecticians, 1519), a lively and trenchant attack on scholastic logic; as well as a critical edition, with an extensive commentary, of Augustine’s De civitate Dei (City of God, 1522), which was commissioned by Erasmus.

From 1523 to 1528, Vives divided his time between England, which he visited on six occasions, and Bruges, where he married Margarita Valldaura in 1524. In England he attended the court of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and was tutor to their daughter, Mary. He also held a lectureship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and associated with English humanists such as Thomas More and Thomas Linacre. During these years he published De institutione feminae Christianae (The Education of a Christian Woman, 1524), in which he set out pedagogical principles for the instruction of women; the extremely popular Introductio ad sapientiam (Introduction to Wisdom, 1524), a short handbook of ethics, blending Stoicism and Christianity; and De subventione pauperum (On Assistance to the Poor, 1526), a program for the organization of public relief, which he dedicated to the magistrates of Bruges. In 1528 he lost the favor of Henry VIII by siding with his fellow countrywoman Catherine of Aragon in the matter of the divorce. He was placed under house arrest for a time, before being allowed to return to Bruges.

The last twelve years of Vives’ life were his most productive, and it was in this period that he published several of the works for which he is best known today. These include De concordia et discordia in humano genere (On Concord and Discord in Humankind, 1529), a piece of social criticism emphasizing the value of peace and the absurdity of war; De disciplinis (On the Disciplines, 1531), an encyclopedic treatise providing an extensive critique of the foundations of contemporary education, as well as a program for its renewal; and De anima et vita (On the Soul and Life, 1538), a study of the soul and its interaction with the body, which also contains a penetrating analysis of the emotions. De veritate fidei Christianae (On the Truth of the Christian Faith), the most thorough discussion of his religious views, was published posthumously in 1543. He died in Bruges on May 6, 1540.

During the Middle Ages, poor relief was usually the responsibility of the Church and individuals through almsgiving. As society became more advanced, these efforts became inadequate. In 1525, the Dutch city of Bruges requested Vives to suggest means to address the issue of relief for the poor. He set out his views in his essay De Subventione Pauperum Sive de Humanis Necessitatibus (On Assistance To The Poor). Vives argued that the state had a responsibility to provide some level of financial relief for the poor, as well as craft training for the unskilled poor. The city of Bruges  implemented Vives’s suggestions in 1557, and his proposals influenced social relief legislation enacted in England and the German Empire during the 1530s.

On Assistance to the Poor

Bruges, 6 January 1526

Juan Luis Vives to the Councilors and the Senate of Bruges:

Cicero says that it is a duty of travelers and visitors to avoid overcuriosity when abroad in a foreign state. He is right, for prying into the affairs of others can be despicable. However, concern and friendly advice will probably not be rejected because the law of nature holds that anything human is not extraneous to man, simply because it is human. Further, the grace of Christ, like a cohesive glue, has cemented all men to each other.

Although I am to a certain degree an alien here myself, I am as truly bound to this city as I am to my own Valencia. I do not call Bruges anything other than homeland, for I have lived here for fourteen years (even if not continuously), and I always return here as to my very home. I delight in your administrative system, the education and civility of your citizens, the extraordinary tranquility and justice which pervade the city and are renowned throughout the world.

For these reasons I married here. I deeply desire your well-being. I am determined to remain in this city and no other for whatever length of my life Christ may graciously grant to me. I consider myself a citizen of this city, and toward its residents I have the same mind as toward my own brothers.

The extreme poverty of so many of them compels me to write how I think they might be assisted. Actually, I had been asked to do this some time ago, when I was in England, by Lord Praet, your burgomaster, who deliberates deeply and often—as, indeed, he ought—concerning the public welfare of the city.

I dedicate this work to you, first, because you are completely committed to benevolence and to the relief of the poor, as confirmed by the crowds of poor who surge to you as to a refuge already prepared for them; secondly, because cities originate where, relief being given and received, love takes root in mutual assistance and strengthens itself through the fellowship of men. There, administrators of the city strive to insure that each man assists others, that no one is oppressed, that no one is wronged by an unjust condemnation, and that the strong assist the weak. Thus, the peace of an entire and united citizenry grows in love each day and endures.

Just as it is disgraceful for the head of a household to allow any member to suffer the lack of food or the embarrassment of wandering in rags, so it follows that, in a wealthy city, its magistrates would not permit its citizens-even a few-to be pressed down by undue hunger and misery.

May it please you to read this. If it does not please you, at least consider the matter most carefully, just as you would investigate with great diligence the litigation of a private person in which a large sum of money is disputed.

May all prosperity and good fortune attend you and this city!

VIVES
Bruges, January 6, 1526

I
THE OBLIGATIONS OF ADMINISTRATORS IN A CITY TOWARD THE POOR

My references here are to the state and the administrator, who is to the former as a soul is to the body. The soul quickens and animates not merely this or that part, but the entire body; thus, the magistrate may never disregard a portion of his governance.

Those who fancy only the wealthy and despise the poor are like doctors who are not concerned about healing the hands or the feet because they are at some distance from the heart. Just as this treatment would bring injury to the whole man, so in the state the weak may not be neglected without danger to the strong. The poor will rob when they are pressed through necessity; yet the judge does not think it important to pay attention to the cause, a small matter to him. These poor envy the rich, and are angered and resentful that the wealthy have so much money to lavish on jesters, dogs, harlots, asses, packhorses, and elephants. In the meantime, the poor themselves do not have the means to feed their starving children. The former proudfully and insolently flaunt their wealth, which has been wrung from these destitute and others like them.

One would hardly believe how many civil insurrections such voices of the poor have incited throughout the nations, wars in which the mobs—wrathful and burning with hate—take out their vengeance first of all upon the wealthy. The Gracchi suggest no other reason, nor did Lucius Catiline, for the anarchy which the mobs aroused; nor is it much less with the riots in our own times and regions. It will not be inappropriate to insert here a passage from Isocrates’ speech, The Areopagiticus, which refers to the customs of the Athenians. He states:

Similarly, they acted in their relations to each other. For there was not only consensus in public matters; but in private affairs they showed the consideration of one another as is appropriate for men of common sense, members of the same homeland. Far from poor citizens envying the richer, they were as concerned about the homes of the wealthy as they were about their own, judging the prosperity of the rich as an advantage to themselves.

The affluent did not despise the poor, but considered it a reflection upon themselves that there should be poverty in the city. They underwrote the necessities of the poor, leasing plots of land to some at a moderate rental, sending others out as their business agents or negotiators, advancing to others the capital for business opportunities. They did not fear losing their investments in these measures, or worry about being despoiled of them in whole or in part. On the contrary, they felt as confident about their money as if it had been under guard at home.

A mutual danger imperils the commonwealth from the contagion of disease. It happens too often that one man has brought into the community some serious and dreadful disease, such as the plague, or syphilis, or the like, causing others to perish. What sort of situation is this, when in every church—especially at the solemn and most heavily attended feasts—one is obliged to enter into the church proper between two rows or squadrons of the sick, the vomiting, the ulcerous, the diseased with ills whose very names cannot be mentioned. And more, this is the only entrance for boys and girls, the aged and the pregnant! Do you think these are made of such iron that, fasting as they are, they are not revolted by this spectacle—especially since ulcers of this sort are not only forced upon the eyes but upon the nose as well, the mouth, and almost on the hands and body as they pass through? How shameless such begging! 1will not even discuss the fact that some who have just left the side of one dead of the plague mingle with the crowd.

These two matters—how diseases may be cured and how their contagion to others can be suppressed—must not be neglected by administrators of the state. Further, a wise government, solicitous for the common good, will not leave so large a part of the citizenry in a condition of uselessness, harmful to themselves and to others. When the general funds have been expended, those without means of subsistence are driven to robbery in the city and on the highways; others commit theft stealthily; women of eligible years put modesty aside and, no longer holding to chastity, put it on sale for a bagatelle (and then, can never be persuaded to abandon this detestable practice); old women take up regular pandering and then sorcery, which promotes procuring. Children of the needy receive a deplorable upbringing. Together with their brood, the poor are cast out of the churches and wander over the land; they do not receive the sacraments and they hear no sermons. We do not know by what law they live, nor what their practices or beliefs. Actually, the discipline of the church has collapsed so completely that no ministrations are offered without an attendant charge. Clerics scorn the reference to selling, yet they force the people into recompense. Even the bishop of a diocese does not consider such shorn sheep as belonging to his fold and pasture.

So, there is no one to see that these beggars go to confession or receive communion with others at the Lord’s Supper. Since they never hear instructions, they inevitably judge things by false standards and lead most disorderly lives. If it happens in some way that they come into money, they are intolerable because of their base and discreditable upbringing. So it follows that those vices (which I cited earlier) are not so much the fault of the poor as of the administrators who do not provide adequate regulations for the good government of the people. Rather, they consider themselves chosen to preside exclusively over legal suits concerning money or to pass sentences on crimes.

On the contrary, it is much more important for magistrates to work on ways of producing good citizens than on punishing or restraining evil-doers. How much less need there would be of punishment if these matters were attended to in the first place! The Romans of ancient times provided in such manner for their citizens that no one needed to beg; hence begging was forbidden in the Twelve Tables. The Athenians took the same preventive measures for their populace. Again, the Lord gave to the Jewish people a peculiar law, hard and intractable, such as became a people of similar temperament; yet in Deuter­ onomy He commands them to such precautions that, so far as it was within their power, there was to be no indigent or beggar among them, especially in that year of rest so acceptable to the Lord. In such manner are all people to live; for them the Lord Jesus was buried-with the Old Law and ceremonials and the “old man’ -and rose again in a regeneration of life and spirit. Unquestionably, it is a scandal and disgrace that we Christians confront everywhere in our cities so many poor and indigent, we to whom no injunction has been more explicitly commanded than charity (I might say, the only one).

Wherever you turn, you encounter poverty and want, always along with those who are obliged to hold out their hands for a dole. In a state, anything ravaged or ruined by time or fortune is renewed, such as walls, ditches, ramparts, streams, institutions, customs, laws themselves; so it would be equally reasonable to reform that method of poor relief which in various ways in the passage of time has become outmoded. The most eminent men, and others interested in the welfare of the city, have devised some salutary measures: taxes have been eased; public lands have been turned over to the poor for cultivation; certain surplus funds have been distributed by the state—things which we have seen even in our own day. However, measures of this sort require specific conditions which appear only too rarely in our times. Recourse must be made, therefore, to other more appropriate and more enduring solutions.

II
IDENTIFICATION AND REGISTRATION OF THE POOR

Someone may ask me: “How do you propose to relieve such numbers?” If true charity dwelt in us, if it were truly a law (though compulsion is not necessary for one who loves), it would hold all things in common. One man would regard another’s distress as though it were his own. As it is, however, no one extends his concern beyond his own home, and sometimes not even beyond his own room or himself personally. Too many are not sufficiently concerned about their own parents or children or brothers or wife. Therefore, since human countermeasures must be employed-especially among those for whom divine commands are ineffective-I suggest the following plan.

Some of the poor live in places usually called “hospitals”—the Greek word is Ptochotrophia, but I will use the more familiar word-and others beg in public; still others endure their afflictions as best they can in their own places. I define a hospital as any place where the sick are fed and nursed, where a given number of indigent persons are supported, boys and girls educated, abandoned infants nourished, the insane confined, and the blind allowed to spend their days. Rulers of states must understand that these institutions are part of their responsibilities.

No one may circumvent the founders’ stipulations in setting up these institutions; these must remain inviolable. With these one should interpret not merely the words but attend primarily to their jurisdiction (as in deeds of trust) and intent (as in wills). On this point, no doubt it was the donors’ desire that the funds left by them should be distributed to the best possible purposes and used in the worthiest places; they were not so much concerned by whom this should be done, or how, as that it should be done.

In the next place, there is nothing so free in the state that it could not be subject to inquiry by those who administer the government. Liberty is found in yielding obedience to the magistrates of the community rather than in that encouragement to violence or in the opportunity for widespread license in whatever direction caprice may lead. No one can remove his property from the custody and control of the state unless he gives up his citizenship. Even more, he may not even give up his life, which is of more importance and value than property. Indeed, everyone has acquired his property with the help of the state, as if it were a gift, and can keep and hold his wealth only through the state.

Therefore, going in two’s and with a secretary, the Senators should visit each of these institutions and inspect it. They should write a full account of its condition, of the number of inmates, their names, who supports them there, and the reason for each person’s being there. These results should be reported to the Councilors and the Senate in assembly.

Those who suffer poverty at home should be registered also, along with their family, by two Senators for each parish, their needs ascertained, their manner of living up until then, and the reason for their decline into poverty. It will be easy to discover from their neighbors what kind of individuals they are, how they live, and what their habits are. However, the testimony of one pauper should not be taken too seriously concerning another pauper, for the one would not be free from jealousy of the other. The Councilors and Senate should be informed of all these things. If someone suddenly becomes destitute, he should notify them through one of the Senators; then his situation can be judged adequately, on the basis of his condition and circumstances.

Beggars in good health who wander about with no fixed dwelling-place should submit their names, and state the reason for their mendicancy to the Senate-however, in some open place or vacant lot, so that their filth may not pollute the Senate chamber. Beggars who are ill should do likewise in the presence of two or four Senators apart, along with a doctor, so that the eyes of the entire Senate may be spared. Witnesses should be sought out by both classes of paupers to testify in regard to their manner of life.

The Senators appointed to make these examinations and perform these duties should be given authority to coerce and compel obedience, even to the point of imprisonment, so that the Senate will be aware of the recalcitrant.

Ill
MEANS OF PROVIDING NECESSITIES FOR THESE DISADVANTAGED

From the outset this principle must be accepted which the Lord imposed on the human race as a punishment for its many sins-that each man should eat the bread which is the fruit of his labor. When I use the word “eat” or “nourish” or “support,” I do not intend to suggest food alone, but clothes, shelter, fuel, and light; in a word, everything that is related to the sustenance of the body.

None among the poor should be idle, provided, of course, that he is fit for work by his age and health. As the Apostle writes to the Thessalonians:

For even when we were with you, we commanded that if anyone will not work, then let him not eat. For we hear that some who walk among you in disorderly manner do not work at all, but are mere busybodies. Now, those who are like that we denounce, and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ that they work in silence and eat their own bread.

And the Psalmist promises a double joy, both in this life and in the next, to him who has eaten out of the labor of his own hands. Therefore, no one must be permitted to live indolently in the state; rather, as in a well-ordered home, everyone has his own role and its related tasks to perform. As the saying goes, “By doing nothing, men learn to do evil.”

Breakdowns in health and age must be taken into consideration. However, in order that a pretense of sickness or infirmity may not be foisted on you—which happens quite frequently-the opinion of physicians must be consulted. Impostors are to be penalized. Of the able-bodied vagrants, those who are aliens should be returned to their own country-as is provided for, according to Imperial law-but they should be supplied with money for the journey. It would be inhuman to send a destitute man on a journey with no provision for the trip; otherwise such a person might question, What is this measure other than commanding him to pillage on the way? If they are from areas ravaged by war, then the teaching of Paul must be borne in mind: that among those who have been baptized in the blood of Christ, there is neither Greek nor pagan, neither Frenchman nor Lowlander, but a new and elevated creature. Hence, these should be treated as though they were native-born.

Should the native-born poor be asked whether they have learned a trade? Yes, and those who have not-if they are of suitable age-should be taught the one to which they are most strongly attracted, provided that it is practical, or else a similar or related occupation. For example, if it is not possible for him to sew clothing, he could sew what they call caligas (soldiers’ boots). If a craft is too difficult, or if he is too slow in learning, another and easier task should be assigned to him, all the way down to one in which he could be sufficiently instructed in a very short time, such as digging, drawing water, carrying loads, pushing a wheelbarrow, serving magistrates, running errands, carrying letters or mail packets, or driving the scheduled horses.

Even those who have dissipated their fortunes in dissolute living-through gaming, harlots, excessive luxury, gluttony, and gambling-should be given food, for no one should die of hunger. However, smaller rations and more irksome tasks should be assigned to them so that they may be an example to others. Perhaps they would come to repent of their prior life and not relapse as easily into the same vices, restrained as they are by the lack of food and the duress of their tasks. They must not die of hunger, but they must feel its pangs.

Many workshops could provide them employment. The woolweavers of Armentium-indeed, craftsmen in almost all the shops-complain of the scarcity of workmen. The silkweavers of Bruges would be glad to hire almost anybody for turning the little wheels of their looms; they would pay a fairly good wage each day, including board, to such workers. Even so, they cannot find boys as apprentices because their parents say that the children bring home more from begging.

Public authority should authorize a certain number of laborers who cannot find work by themselves to be assigned to one director of a workshop. When such a worker has progressed far enough in his craft, he should open his own workshop. To these, as well as to those to whom the magistrates had assigned apprentices, contracts should be given for manufacturing the numerous items which the state uses for public purposes, such as portraits, statues, robes, sewers, ditches, buildings, and supplies required by the hospitals.

Since funds for such measures of support were originally given for the poor, they should be spent on the poor. I would like to remind bishops, theologians, and abbots of this, but will write for them elsewhere. I would hope that they would do these things spontaneously, without being urged on by me.

As for those not yet assigned to a specific work or master-artisan, they should be maintained in some place by alms for the time being; but they should not remain idle in the meantime or learn slothfulness through inactivity. In places of this sort, breakfast or dinner should be given to healthy vagrants along with enough money for travel to take them to the next city which lies on their way.

The able-bodied who remain in the hospitals like drones, living by the sweat of others, should leave and be put to work. However, some must be allowed to remain because of a given estate-such as the law of gentility—or the prerogative willed by a generous benefactor or because of having made over their property to the institution. Even in these cases, they should be obliged to work in the hospital so that the result of their labors may be shared by all. If anyone healthy and robust ask to be allowed to remain because of his love for the home and for his companions, he could be granted this favor, but on the same condition.

No one should be attracted by the money that was contributed earlier for pious works. This warning is not without foundation. For there are those who, from servants, have become masters. Ladies living delicately in splendor and luxury were originally admitted to perform works of piety; but now, having thrust out the poor or else keeping them grudgingly, they have become haughty mistresses. This office of ministration must be taken from them so that they will not grow fat from the pennies of the starving poor; so let them perform the duty which they came there to do. They should be intent upon ministering to the sick, like those widows of the early church who were so highly praised by the Apostles. In the balance of their time, they could pray, read, spin, weave, or occupy themselves in some good and honest labor-all of which Jerome advises for even the richest and most aristocratic matrons.

The blind should not be allowed to sit idle or wander about aimlessly. There are many occupations in which they might be employed. Some are suited for academic training; these should be allowed to study since their aptitude for letters is no small thing. Others are suited to the art of music; they could sing, pluck the lute, or play the flute. Others might turn weavers’ wheels, work treadmills, tread winepresses, or blow bellows in the smithies. Still other blind are particularly skilled in making little boxes and chests, fruit-baskets and cages. Women who are blind could spin and wind yarn. Since it is easy enough to find employment for them, none of the blind should be willing to sit idle or avoid work. Laziness and a love of ease are the reasons for pretending they cannot do things, not physical defect.

The infirm and the aged, too, should have lighter tasks assigned them suited to their age and strength. No one is so feeble or lacking in strength that he can do nothing. It follows that the evil thoughts and affections likely in the minds of the idle will be controlled by those who are employed and intent upon work.

Then, when all the leeches have been eliminated from the hospitals, the resources of each institution should be examined, taking into account its regular expenses, annual revenues, and the money on hand. Treasure rooms and superfluous trappings should be eliminated, since they are only toys for children or misers, useless in a life of piety. Then, assign to each of the hospitals as many of the sick poor as it will seem proper, taking care that the food is not so scanty that their hunger will not be easily satisfied. This is one of the essentials in the care of those who are sick in body or mind, for invalids often grow worse from an inadequate diet. On the other hand, there should be no luxury by which they might easily fall into bad practices.

Now let us refer to the insane. Since there is nothing in the world more excellent than man, and nothing more excellent in man than his mind, particular care should be given to its welfare. It should be considered the highest of ministries to restore the mind of others to sanity, or to keep them sane and rational. Therefore, when a man of disturbed mental faculties is brought to the hospital, first of all, it must be determined whether his insanity is congenital or has resulted from some environmental cause, and whether there is hope for health or whether the case is completely hopeless. One ought to feel a compassion before such a great disaster to this noblest of human faculties. He who has suffered so should be treated with such care and delicacy that the cure will not enlarge or increase the condition, such as would result from mocking, exciting, or irritating him, approving and applauding the foolish things which he says or does, and inciting him to act more ridiculously, applying a stimulus, as it were, to his absurdity and stupidity. What could be more inhuman than to drive a man to insanity just for the sake of laughing at him and entertaining oneself with such a misfortune!

Remedies suited to the individual patient should be prescribed. Some need care and attention to their mode of living. Others need mild and gentle treatment so that, like wild animals, they may gradually grow less violent. Some require education. Some may need force and chains, but these should be used in such a way that the patients will not become the more violent because of them. Above all, as far as it is possible, tranquillity must be introduced into their minds, for it is through this that reason and mental health return.

If the hospitals cannot accommodate all the diseased beggars, one or more homes should be built, as many as are necessary, where they can be treated separately. A doctor, a pharmacist, and male and female nurses should be hired. Doing this is what nature (as well as a builder of ships) does, locating the repugnant in one place so that it may not offend the rest of the body. Likewise, those afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease should sleep and eat their food in a place apart so that their repulsive condition, or the infection itself, may not creep over the rest of the population—or else there will never be an end to disease.

When a patient recovers, he should be treated in the same manner as the rest who are healthy. He should be sent out to work unless, out of compassion, he would prefer to remain serving in the hospital with his particular skills.

For the poor who live at home, work should be furnished by the public officials, by the hospitals, or by private citizens. If their work is not enough to supply their needs, whatever seems adequate should be added to their earnings.

Investigators into the needs of the poor should perform their task humanely and kindly. While nothing should be given if the judgment on their needs is unfavorable, still intimidation should never be applied unless deemed necessary in dealing with the refractory or the rebels against public authority.

This one law should be inviolable: “If anyone request money or exert influence in favor of a person supposedly in need, he should not receive it; instead, there should be a penalty according as the Senate sees fit.” It should always be permissible to inform the Senate of the needs of others. The administrators of charities—or whoever may be appointed by the Senate—should find the balance, and give alms in proportion to the need. This is to guard against the situation in the future when wealthy men, preserving their own moneys, might demand that money which belongs to the destitute should be expended on their own servants, domestics, relatives, and friends. Such favoritism steals from those who need it so much more, as we have already seen happen in the hospitals.

IV
PROVISIONS FOR CHILDREN

A hospital must be established for abandoned children where they may be reared. If mothers are known, they should nurture the infants until the sixth year. After this age, all such children would enter a publicly supported school where they would be educated in letters and morals, and be maintained.

As far as possible, this school should be in charge of men who are trustworthy and who have a solid and broad education themselves, so that they may pour out their culture into this basic school with their own example. No greater danger for the sons of the poor exists than a cheap, inferior, and demoralizing education. In order to secure teachers of this upright character, magistrates should spare no expense. At relatively small cost, the latter will thus perform a great service to the state over which they preside.

The students should learn to live frugally, but neatly and clean, and to be, content with little. They should be protected from all forms of dissipation. They must not develop habits of intemperance and gluttony, becoming slaves of the belly. Otherwise, when they are deprived of something that their appetite calls for, they will shamelessly take up begging, as we have seen some do the moment they do not get, not just the food, but even their condiments such as mustard, sauce, or some such trifle.

They should be taught not only reading and writing but, above all, the duty of a Christian and right attitudes toward things.

I suggest a similar school for girls, in which they can be taught the fundamentals of literacy. If one girl is particularly qualified for studies and is inclined to them, she should be permitted to progress farther, provided that the courses coincide with the development of her character. In addition to spinning, sewing, weaving, embroidery, cooking, and home management, all girls should be taught a virtuous perspective and morality as well as modesty, frugality, gentleness, good manners, and, primarily, chastity (convinced, as they ought to be, of the excellence of this virtue in women).

Any of the boys who are particularly skilled at letters should be retained by the school to become teachers themselves; later on, they might become candidates for the priesthood. The others should learn the trades in which they are most interested.

V
SUPERVISORS AND THEIR DUTIES

Two supervisors should be appointed every year from among the members of the Senate, eminent individuals of obvious integrity, to become acquainted with the way of life of the poor, of boys, youths, and old men alike. With regard to boys, inquiry should be made concerning their occupations, the progress they are making, the sort of lives they lead, the talents they possess, the promise they show, and, if any one of them is in trouble, who is to blame. From these, corrections can be made.

In regard to young adults and old men, the supervisors should inquire if they are living according to the laws governing them. Such investigators should also inquire most carefully concerning old women, who are master-hands at pandering and sorcery. Further, they should study whether all of these persons lead a frugal and sober life. Those who frequent gaming places and wine and beer taverns should be penalized. If reprimands have no effect, such persons should be punished severely.

A system of penalties should be devised in each state, asjudged applicable by its wisest and most prestigious citizens. The same measures do not apply equally to all places and times; some men are influenced by some things, and others, by other things. In any case, the fraud of idle, lazy men must be guarded against so that deception has no profit.

I would also suggest that the supervisors investigate as well the youth who are the sons of the wealthy. It could be very valuable to the well-being of the state if they were to oblige such young men to render an account to the magistrates (as though to fathers) concerning their use of time, and what activities and occupations they follow. This could prove a greater alms than that which is distributed to the poor.

In ancient times, this service was provided by the office of Questor, or Censor, among the Romans, and among the Athenians in the court of Areopagus. When the old practices had deteriorated, they were revived by the Emperor Justinian in codifying the duties of the Questor. These included the injunction to survey all persons—both ecclesiastical and secular, of whatever rank and fortune-asking who they were, from whence they came, and for what reason they were there. That same law allowed no one to live in idleness.

VI
THE FUNDING OF THESE PROPOSALS

The above plan sounds wonderful, someone will say, but where are we to get the funds for all these projects? As I see it, not only will funds not be lacking but-I believe with complete assurance-they will abound. They will be available not only for the basic necessities of life but for extraordinary needs as well, of the sort that inevitably occur to people everywhere.

In another era when the life of Christ was still vital, all believers cast their wealth at the feet of the Apostles to be distributed by them to everyone according to need. In time, the Apostles relinquished this responsibility as not becoming for them. In truth, it was more appropriate for them to teach the community and to preach the Gospel than to spend their time in soliciting and distributing money; therefore, this duty was given to deacons. These latter did not retain it very long, for so great was their zeal for teaching and spreading Christian living that they hurried on through a blessed death to everlasting bliss. Consequently, lay persons supplied the needs of the poor. The number of Christians increased, many persons of questionable probity were admitted, and the administration of moneys began to be managed dishonestly by some of them. Out of love for the poor, bishops and priests once again assumed the responsibility for the funds collected for charity. At that time, there was nothing that men would not entrust to bishops, who were persons of tried and universally recognized integrity and fidelity, a fact mentioned by John Chrysostom.

However, as the ardor for the blood of Christ increasingly abated and the
Spirit of the Lord was communicated to fewer, the Church began to copy the world and to rival it in pomp, pride, and luxury. Jerome complained that the governors of the provinces dined more sumptuously in the monastery than in the palace. This extravagance required large sums of money, and so the bishops and priests diverted to this purpose money that belonged to the poor. If only the Spirit of God would touch them and recall to their minds whence they had received it, who had given it, and for what reason! If only they would remember that out of the substance of the poor they had become powerful!

It is the obligation of bishops not only to teach, console, and correct in concerns of the souls of men but also to heal their bodies, succoring the poor from their own substance (even if that is extremely small). They would do this to their great advantage and their peace of mind if their faith in Christ were as great as they wish the faith of others to be. Of course, this is a common failing: all of us mercilessly demand in another the virtue which we do not ourselves possess.

In a word, bishops should follow the example of Paul, to be absolutely perfect in charity that they might be all things to all men, neither deferring to the mighty nor despising the lowly, but placing themselves on the same level with all men in order to help them and edify them, according to the word of Christ. Bishops, abbots, and other officials of the Church (if only they wished it) could relieve a very large portion of the existing poverty out of their large incomes; if they do not do so, Christ will avenge it!

Turmoil and civil disorder must always be avoided because this is a greater evil than the misappropriation of the funds for the poor. However vast wealth may be, it should never be so highly revered that men would take up arms on its account. Above all, respect must be had for the general peace, as Christ taught, and also Paul, restating his master. Nor should the poor yearn for any disorder in the state whereby they would profit. Rather, it is proper for them to be unconcerned about the times, devoting themselves day and night to meditation upon the end of this life’s journey to that haven and fatherland where they will hear, “Lazarus once suffered in his lifetime; now, therefore, he will be comforted and refreshed.”

The annual revenue of hospitals should be calculated as a whole. I have no doubt that, when work has been assigned to those able to do it, not only will the income be sufficient to care for those who live there; it will be enough to care for those who live on the outside as well. I am told that the wealth of hospitals in any town you can name is so great that, if it were properly administered, there would be more than enough for supplying all the ordinary as well as unforeseen and extraordinary needs of the citizens.

Wealthy institutions should share their superfluous income with the poorer and if the poorer are not desperate, the surplus should go to those suffering in secret. Let Christian charity diffuse itself thus not only throughout the whole state making, as it were, one harmonious household, with common interests among them all, each a friend to all—but spread out and enclose the whole Christian world. Let it come to pass, as we read it was among the Apostles:

The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul. No one of them said that anything he possessed was his own. Rather, they held all things in common … neither was there among them any who lacked for anything.

So it follows that wealthy hospitals and rich men will send their contributions to neighboring places when there are none in their own city who need help, or even to distant places where there are greater needs. This is true Christian action.

For each hospital the Senate should appoint by vote two overseers, who are respected, God-fearing men. They should render a yearly account of their administration. If their performance is satisfactory, they could continue in office; if not, new officers should be selected.

Many a man at his death wills something to the poor, according to his means. He should be encouraged to stipulate that money for the poor be deducted from the pomp of his funeral. If this were so, such a funeral would be more acceptable to God and would still not lack honor among men. Those about to depart this life should have no concern for praise and glory except from God. At the funeral, meat would then be distributed, and bread, as well as money or supplies. This should be at the discretion of those who have charge of the decedent’s estate, both on the occasion of the funeral and on the anniversary of his death.

In the next place, if money is willed for the poor, the overseers should investigate in what manner it is dispensed, so that it may not be given to those not in need of it.

If all these sources of money are not sufficient, then little boxes should be placed in three or four of the principal churches of the town where attendance is laigest. Into these boxes everyone would be able to deposit as much as his devotion would suggest. There would not be a devout person who would not prefer to place a large sum therein than give a small sum directly into the hands of wandering beggars. The boxes would not be set out every week but only when need demanded it. Two honest and trustworthy men would be in charge of them, men chosen by the Senate not so much for wealth as for a mind free from greed and selfishness, a qualification of highest importance for such a position.

The policy should be to collect not as much as possible but, generally, only enough to suffice from week to week (perhaps a little more) lest the collectors become accustomed to handling large sums of money, and the same thing happen to them as to those in charge of the hospitals. What the practice in this state is, I do not know-nor do I seek to know, since I am intent on my studies. However, I have heard that in Spain the elders of a family would enrich their own houses greatly from the wealth of hospitals, feeding themselves and their families instead of the poor, keeping these homes filled with relatives, so that the hospitals actually have few paupers. These things are the result of easy access to so much ready money.

In a similar vein, no lands for farming (which would offset the difficulties of the poor) should be purchased. This furnishes a pretext to the directors of the hospitals to retain the money given them while the full sum is being collected for the investment and being kept until it is proper to buy. In the meantime, the pauper wastes away from hunger and want, and dies.

If there is a large sum of money in the hands of those who have charge of public finances, it should be circulated, as I said before, and sent to needier localities. For a large sum of money magnifies the desire for it to such a degree that those who handle it are more reluctant to withdraw something from it than they would be from a small amount. Whatever is strictly necessary should be kept in the hands of the Senate under oath and protected by bans and threats, so that it will not be diverted to any other use. It should be expended at the first opportunity so that it will not become customary to keep any of it undisclosed. There will never be a lack of persons who need aid, as Our Lord predicted, “The poor you have always with you.”

Care should be exercised that the priests, under cover of their prayers and masses, do not turn the money to their own pockets. They are adequately cared for and need nothing more.

If it happens that voluntary contributions do not suffice, wealthy men should be approached by the overseers and asked to aid the poor whom God has committed to the latter’s zealous care. At least the hospital could borrow what is needed; if the wealthy insist on it, this loan could be repaid later in good faith when alms are more plentiful.

Besides this, the state itself should deduct something from public expenses, such as from funds for solemn feasts, gifts to honored guests, state-financed entertainments for foreign ambassadors, and the largesse of money which is distributed to the people on special occasions, annual games, and processions. All these contribute only to a waste of time, to pride, and to ambition. I do not doubt that a prince would be just as well pleased, if not more so, if he were welcomed with less display, provided he knew for what good purpose the money, customarily poured out at his coming, was being spent. If he did not take to this well, he would indeed be childishly conceited and stupidly ambitious. However, if the state did not want to do this, then at least it could lend what it might later recoup at a time more promising for alms.

Almsgiving should always be voluntary, as Paul said, “Each man… according as he has decided in his heart, not grudgingly or from obligation.” No one should be forced to do good, otherwise the very concept of doing good is lost. I do not doubt that by these means there will be sufficient and even more. However, in so holy a business, we should not measure ourselves solely by human strength, but place our reliance primarily on God. He will bless righteous undertakings, increasing for the rich the sources of their charity, as well as the alms of the poor who modestly ask, gratefully receive, and prudently spend. The Lord provides for all: “His is the earth and the fullness thereof.” He created all things abundantly for our use, asking in return only a ready and genuine good will, and a grateful love for so many immeasurable blessings.

Many examples prove that when a holy work has been undertaken by men with some anxiety and even hopelessness on their part lest the funds for it should not be sufficient, as the work progressed it has been so blessed that even those who have charge of it are forced to wonder by what hidden ways resources have opened. You will remember one experience, typical of many, in your own school for poor boys which you established ten years ago with such minimum funds that not more than eighteen boys could be maintained there. You were concerned that you would not be able to maintain the institution. Now, more or less one hundred boys are supported there, and the funds have grown so large that even more could be assisted. When extra boys arrive, there is always something for them to eat.

Undoubtedly it is by the universal bounty of God that everything is maintained and augmented, lives and grows, not by wealth and private resources or human counsels. Hence, in pious undertakings, it would be impious to gloat over your own talents; rather, rejoice in the confidence you have in Him to Whom all things are possible.

As for the unemployed poor themselves, they should learn not to make provisions for the distant future, for this increases their sense of human security and lessens their dependence on God. They should not rely on human assistance but on Christ alone, Who has exhorted us to relinquish all concerns for our sustenance to Him and His Father Who feeds and clothes those creatures that neither sow nor reap, weave or spin. The poor should lead an angelic life, so to speak, intent on prayer first for themselves and then for the weal of those by whom they have been assisted, so that the Lord Jesus might consider them worthy to receive recompense a hundredfold in everlasting blessings.

VII
ASSISTING THOSE WHO SUFFER SUDDEN OR SECRET MISFORTUNE

Relief should be given not only to the poor who are without day-to-day necessities of life, but also to those on whom some sudden calamity has fallen, such as captivity in war, imprisonment for debt, fire, shipwreck, floods, all kinds of sicknesses, or any of those numerous catastrophes that bring disaster to ordinary homes. To these unfortunate individuals may be added young girls whom poverty has driven to prostitution. It is intolerable in any state-I will not say Christian, nor even heathen, only provided one live in a community where men live as humans that, where some of the citizens so give themselves to extravagances as to squander huge sums on a sepulchre, palace, useless building, banquets, or public offices, for lack of a few pennies the chastity of a virgin is tempted, the health and life of an honest man is threatened, or a husband is forced to desert his wife and children.

Captives must be ransomed, an action mentioned by the ancient philosophers (Aristotle, Cicero, and others) as one of the noblest acts of benevolence. First attention should be given to those who suffer a cruel servitude among enemies, such as the Christians who are in the power of the Turks and are daily in peril of renouncing their faith. Similar consideration should be taken for the business­ men and noncombatants who have fallen into the hands of the enemy. Armed combatants who have been captured deserve the least pity since they are the cause of the ills of others.

Of those in prisons, the first to consider are those who have fallen into poverty and bankruptcy through misfortune rather than their own fault; and then attention should be given to those who have been imprisoned for a long time. The man who has been precipitated from his once happy circumstances into misery through no fault of his own is to be greatly pitied, whether because he represents the mutual fate of humanity and stands as a symbol of the experiences of all men, or because he suffers the most acutely through a vestigial recollection of former happiness.

Men of breeding should not have to wait until they disclose their needs themselves. They should be diligently sought out and assisted secretly, such as Arcesilaus did, and many others similar, who placed a large sum of money under the pillow of a sleeping friend, a man both poor and ill, who concealed both facts from a feeling of shame. Then when the troubled individual awoke, he found relief without any injury to his honest pride. For as a principle in assisting, through public charity, a man who has been reared in gentility, care should be exercised not to wound his pride, which he may value more than the relief, however acceptable and useful that may be.

The same men to whom we assigned the supervision of the parishes should also investigate concealed needs of this sort and report them to the Senate and to men of wealth, at the same time withholding the names of the deprived and the amount of assistance needed. On the other hand, it might be better if even those poor would accept charity openly so that they can know whom to thank; further, there would be no suspicion on either side as, for instance, that those through whom it is given have funneled off some of the money. This openness would not do if the rank of the destitute man is so high that he ought not to be exposed to the embarrassment.

“But,” someone will object, “if men of that class are to be assisted too, where will be the end of giving?” Indeed, what more ideal situation can be imagined than the boundlessness of charity? You have said something extremely petty—1 was hoping that you would deplore the fact that at some future time there would be none left on whom to bestow compassion. Indeed, you ought to wish, for the sake of your neighbor, that there would come a time when none would need the wealth of others; for your own sake, you should hope that you would never lack the opportunity of such great profit to yourself, securing eternal blessings in exchange for things liable to varying fortunes and passing fancies.

It seems to me, in the present state of things, that these suggestions should be implemented. It may not be expedient in every city and in every circumstance to institute everything I have prescribed. Wise men in every nation will perceive this, and will consult the best interests of their own states. Still, the overall aim, intention, and goal that I have outlined will, I believe, be expedient and necessary always and in every place. If it is not possible for all these matters to be carried out at once-perhaps because traditional practices run contrary to innovation-it should be feasible with ingenuity to introduce the more moderate reforms first, and after that gradually those considered more extreme.

VIII
CONCERNING THOSE WHO WILL OPPOSE THESE PROPOSALS

Although virtue is most beautiful and desirable in itself, it nevertheless has many enemies who are exceedingly irritated by the very notion of it and its excellence, as well as by its attacks—fierce and uncompromising-upon their dissipated lives. The world, past and present, fights against the law of Christ whose brightness neither the darkness of sinners nor the vitiated eyes of evil men can withstand or endure.

So in the matter being discussed; although everything refers to the provision for the needs of man and the relief of the poverty-stricken (as anyone can easily judge, provided he is a fair, unbiased critic), still there will be no lack of persons to misinterpret and object, even though the thrust toward humaneness is made. For example, when certain individuals hear that this proposes nothing else than the elimination of the poor, they assume that paupers will be banished in person and cry out against the inhumanity of thus evicting those miserable individuals. As if we would desire to drive them out, or do anything to make them more miserable! This is not our purpose; rather, it is to free them from their distress, their struggles, and their perpetual misfortunes so that they may live more humanly and be treated with compassion.

There are some who would like to be thought of as theologians who cite a passage from the Gospel, without reference to the context in which it is located, where Christ our Lord and God prophesied, “The poor you will always have with you.” What of that? Did He not predict future scandals? And Paul-that there would be heresies? Shall we therefore not assist the poor, or live unoffensively or resist heresies, for fear that we might prove the prophecies false? God forbid! Christ did not predict that the poor would always be with us because this is what He desired, or that scandals would eventuate because this is what He hoped for. In fact, He recommends nothing to us more explicitly than the relief of the poor, condemning those who cause this deplorable condition.

For He knows the weakness through which we fall into poverty, and lie knows our malice through which we are reluctant to raise up a fallen man, preferring him to remain lying almost dead, and wasted. For this reason Me says that we shall always have the poor with us; the same thing can be said in regard to the prophecy of sin.

Concerning heresies, Paul maintained that they would come because of the corrupted nature of man, defiled as it is with many vices. Yet he wished them to be resisted when they arose, as he said to Titus: “The bishop should exhort with sound doctrine and confound the dissidents.” So in these predictions Christ does not command us to act in that manner, but sees that we will. In the same line of thinking, these proposals of mine will not eliminate poverty but will relieve it; they will not prevent a man from becoming a pauper but will preclude his remaining one for long by a prompt offer of a hand to help him to his feet.

I wish we were able to eliminate poverty completely in this city. I do not worry that Christ’s words will be judged false. There would be so many remaining who would be poor in other respects. It is not only those without money who are poor but those who lack bodily vitality, physical well-being, and mental health and sanity, as was explained at the beginning of this work.

Moreover, he must be called poor, even if he has money, to whom—whether in a hospital or in his own home-delicate food is supplied which has not been obtained by his own industry and labor but through the kindness of another. Tell me, who act more humanly-those who leave the poor to rot in their filth, squalor, vice, crime, shamelessness, immodesty, ignorance, madness, misfortune, and misery?-or those who devise a way by which they may rescue them from that life and lead them into a mode of living, more social, cleaner, and wiser, clearly salvaging so many men who were formerly lost and useless? We are acting here in the same manner as the medical profession who cannot eradicate diseases completely from the population but bend every effort to cure them.

If only the law of Christ were more deeply rooted in our minds and hearts, that it might be more effective than medical knowledge! Then it might happen that there would be no paupers among us, as there were none in the early Church, according to the account of Luke in the Acts of the Apostles-nor scandals or heresies. However, our sins encumber us; men continue to profess the name of Christian not so much in their heart and by the action of their lives as by their mouths; hence, there will always be paupers and scandals and heresies.

In addition, perhaps there will be some men, as is likely in public office, who-in order to be judged wise so as to acquire influence for that reason-approve of nothing except what they have proposed. Surely these men have an erroneous concept not only of men but of God, if they believe-and wish others to be so persuaded that God has been ineffective in all His other acts of creation, but has poured out upon these “thinkers” all the mental power of ingenuity, judgment, and wisdom. In this matter, Job said sarcastically, “Are you then the only man, and shall wisdom die with you?” I would not deny that there are some men who have such initiative, skill, and keenness of judgment that, in thinking and in deliberating, they generate more ideas than the rest of mankind. But even for that reason, to judge that which has been conceived by one’s self as best is to become a man of arrogance without experience, as Terrence says of administrators “who judge nothing of value except what they do themselves.”

Specifically, I anticipate two classes of men to be hostile to these plans: first, the very ones whom this philanthropy is intended to benefit; and, second, those who will be ousted from the management of funds. In the first case, some have grown so accustomed to their squalor and filth and misery that they resent being raised out of it. Captivated as they are by a certain sweetness of inertia and idleness, they think activity, labor, industry, and frugality more painful than death. How difficult, then, the task of doing good among these, since their depravity interprets kindness as injury! How odious of them to receive charity haughtily, as if offended, and to interpret it as an insult! This invidious attitude is very like that of the Jews who persecuted with death the Author of life because He showed them kindness, helped them, and brought them health, salvation, and light. They heaped insults on Him in return for the charity poured out on all who would accept it. Immersed in pride, arrogance, ambition, and avarice, they judged it an affront to be liberated from those demanding masters. In the same way, these poor, buried in squalor, filth, shame, idleness, and crime, think they are being dragged into slavery if their condition is ameliorated. We could imitate the true Christ Himself Who was not diverted from doing good by the ingratitude of those who received His advantages.

Consideration should be given not so much to what a man would like, as to what is good for him to have, not what pleases him but what is expedient for him. In time, they will recognize this value when they return to a more positive mind and will say, “The Senate of Bruges saved us against our will.” But should you indulge them and follow along with their desires—if even for a moment they recover sight and reason-undoubtedly they will say, ‘The Senate ruined us with love.” This is the complaint which every son, indulged in too freely, makes of his father. The poor so indulged will despise those by whom they have been assisted to their destruction.

In order that this may not occur, let us treat them as experienced physicians treat delirious patients—or wise fathers, their rebellious children—seeking their true good, no matter the resistance and the clamor. In a word, it is the duty of the ruler of the state not to be disturbed by what this one or that one or a given few think about the laws and administration, so long as he has consulted with the common good of the entire state. For laws are of benefit even to the law-breakers themselves by correcting and checking them in their wrongdoing.

Those who have been handling the funds for the poor will be annoyed at being removed from office. They will search out an eloquent vocabulary with which to exaggerate the enormity of the proposal: “This, these matters should be left alone… What has been confirmed by years of approval should not be interfered with. . . . It is dangerous to introduce new practices… The stipula­ tions of founders should not be changed… Everything is close to ruin.”

To these we reply: “First, will not good practices weaken that which has been rooted in evil customs?” They will not dare to descend into that argument. Then: “Which is better?—what we are attempting to introduce, or what they wish to retain?” More: “If nothing is to be changed, why have they themselves gradually altered the first regulations established by the founders of an institution to such a degree that those in force today run counter to the original?”

Let the records be opened, let the memories of old men be questioned. It will be discovered how much the present administration differs from that when the institution was new, and while the founder was still alive or only recently deceased. Here we have caught them on a crucial matter. We do not wish to change the original organization; we will not tolerate the violation of the founder’s intent, for in every will this is the first—or, rather, the only—issue. The original intent can be discovered from records and the memory of many individuals. As for the will of the founder, who does not understand that these men left their money and endowments, not that the rich might be sated but that the poor might be supported, even as they pray for their deceased benefactors that they might be forgiven their sins and be received by God into His heavenly dwelling?

Now if these objectors raise too much opposition, they will certainly make it clear to all that they are looking out for their own interests instead of that of the poor. We undertake a responsibility for the poor, and yet they oppose it—what do they have in view? If it is for their own interests, they stand convicted of avarice, and make it clear that they have managed things for their own advantage and not for the poor. Such avarice is not only ignoble but is absolutely pernicious and detestable. Since it is a crime to steal anything from a wealthy man, how much more scandalous is it to rob the poor! From the rich man, it is money which is stolen; from the poor, it is life.

If, however, it is the poor for whom they are concerned, the Senate wishes the poor to be supported even more generously. Is it any concern of these individuals by whom poor relief is provided, so long as it is done, and done as well as possible?—as by the Senate in whom confidence has been placed with good reason in the past. As St. Paul said, “That Christ may be preached—in what manner, I do not care, provided only that He is preached.”

However, they wish to run the work themselves. If they have respect for God, they will joyfully concede; but if for men, their ambition has been found out. Further, would they dare to complain because you do not offer yourselves as ministers of their ambitions and avarice? Indeed, if you remain silent, are you not abetting them? I will pass over things which might be said on this matter if their long-term administration were to be examined, I will not be mired in this bog; I will not stir up this mud. But in truth, they would have no small honor-if they did not oppose these measures, and if they did not hold on to the money entrusted to them or deposited in their keeping-if they advanced the interests of the poor, devoted themselves to promoting the harmony of the state, and proved themselves such friends of the public good that they consider it their personal possession.

IX
NOTHING SHOULD STAND IN THE WAY OF CARRYING OUT THESE PROPOSALS

The most eloquent comments have been made by classical writers on every sort of virtue, while their acts were of highest import and dignity. Yet they never conducted themselves with such constancy, courage, and worthiness as when loyalty to their country and love of their fellow citizens, implanted in their hearts, caused them to endure misrepresentations, unjust accusations, curses, and insults with undisturbed and resolute minds. They did not deviate a hair’s breadth for that reason from their determination to aid their nation, even when the very ones who would be most helpful censured and condemned their actions.

Prominent among the number of such men are Miltiades, Themistocles, Scipio, and above all Epaminandos the Theban and Quintus Fabius Maximus of Rome. The latter knew that Hannibal could be defeated not by force but by delay, and therefore he prolonged the war with stalling actions, convinced that this was the only hope for victory. Many idle and craftily argumentative men complained of these tactics, saying that Fabius was doing this by agreement with Hannibal, or from ambition—that he might remain longer in power as the chief officer of the state—or from cowardice and fear, that they would abrogate his power.

As a matter of fact, Minucius, the Master of Horse, was made equal to the Dictator himself by popular vote, which had never been heard of before. The old man was undaunted by the calumny and folly of his fellow citizens and persisted in his plans, bringing his people to victory. Undoubtedly, Hannibal would have conquered the land if the strategy of Fabius had not thwarted him. The event declared how great a mind that hero possessed, what insight he had, what love for his country and his fellowmen.

These little verses about him have been universally popular, ancient and crude though they are, but eloquent and enthusiastic in their praise:

One man with his delaying restored
everything to us;
Nor did he place common opinion
above the common good;
Therefore, more and more men now
enlarge his glory.

Others of similar mind performed noble deeds even though they did not know God (since, for them, the sun of Christianity had not arisen). They were merely acting as they had been taught, or were seeking honor and fame for their country.

How much greater and nobler should our actions be! We have witnessed the one Christ despise—indeed, disdain and score human power. For us, that most glorious sun has dawned, and we have been reared in the true faith. To us charity has been commended and commanded, with a heavy penalty if we neglect the command and a great reward if we execute it. The reward will be amplified according to the suffering we endure for the grace of God.

Therefore, this plan must not merely be approved; it must be adopted and put into operation. It is not enough to have good intentions unless you also put your hand to the work when occasion arises. It is not appropriate that those who are urged and spurred on by divine commands should be held back by human obstacles, especially since material and spiritual benefits accrue to both the state and the individual.

X
THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL ADVANTAGES WHICH WILL RESULT FROM THESE MEASURES

  1. Tremendous honor adheres in the state in which no beggar is seen, for a great multitude of paupers argues malice and apathy in the citizenry and neglect of the public good by the magistrates.
  2. Fewer thefts, acts of violence, robberies, murders, and capital offenses will be committed. Pandering and sorcery will be less frequent. This follows because the poverty will be mitigated which drives men first into vices and bad habits and then encourages and provokes crimes like the above.
  3. Greater peace will prevail where everyone is provided for.
  4. Greater concord will prevail. The poor will not envy the wealthy, but will esteem them as benefactors; the rich will not turn away from the destitute in suspicion, but will esteem them as the reason for their bounty and the objects of their rightful charity. Nature demands that we love those to whom we give support; thus, love begets love.
  5. It will be safer, healthier, and pleasanter to attend churches and to dwell in the city. The hideousness of ulcers and diseases will no longer be imposed on the general viewing, eliminating a spectacle revolting to nature and even to the most humane and compassionate mind. Those of small means will not be forced to give alms through pressure. If a man is inclined to give, he will not be deterred either by the great multitude of beggars or by the fear of giving to someone unworthy.
  6. The state will gain enormously. More citizens will become more virtuous, more law-abiding, and more useful to the nation. Everyone will hold the state dearer in which-or by means of which-they are sustained. Nor will they participate in revolution or sedition. Women will withdraw from their pernicious practices, young women from dangers to their modesty, old women from their evil designs. Boys and girls will be taught letters, religion, temperance, and self-support, all of which form the basis of an upright, honest, pious life. Finally, everyone will exercise judgment, sensitivity, and piety. They will live among men as educated and disciplined persons, observing human laws. They will hold back their hands from violence, serving God truly and in good faith. They will be men. They will be what they are called, Christians. What else is this, I ask, than restoring many thousands of men to themselves and winning them for Christ! That is heaven’s profit, for innumerable souls will be liberated through religion.

Some know that they ought to discharge the duties of charity, yet they do not perform what has been commanded; others are repelled by the unworthiness of the applicants; others withdraw because their good intention is embarrassed by the great number, and they are drawn in the opposite direction, as it were, uncertain where first or most effectively to bestow their money. They see so many oppressed by want that in a sort of despair they succor no one, feeling that whatever is given is too little, like sprinkling a drop of water here and there on raging flames of fire.

However, if our plan is adopted, those who have means will give them generously, delighted that things are so carefully and exactingly managed. In being sure that their contributions are well placed, they will help mankind, according to the commands of Christ, and win His generous favor. Undoubtedly, many wealthy men of other cities—who have not in similar fashion made the affairs of the poor their concern—will send generous contributions here, where they know funds are wisely spent and aid given to those most in need. Added to this, God will protect as His own a people who are compassionate, and make them truly blessed.

Listen to the kind of nation properly termed blessed according to the testimony, not of an ordinary man but of a prophet:

From the peril of sword save me;
rescue me from the power of aliens
who tell nothing but lies,
who are prepared to swear to falsehood!
May our sons be like plants
growing strong from their earliest days,
our daughters like corner-statues, carvings fit for a palace;
may our barns overflow with every possible crop;
may the sheep in our fields be counted
in their thousands and tens of thousands;
may our cattle be stout and strong;
and may there be an end of raids and exile, and of panic in our streets.
Happy the nation of whom this is true,
happy the nation whose God is Yahweh!

Nor will temporal blessings be lacking, as it was written of the widow who gave food to Elias. Also, the Psalmist sings of that nation in which the Lord dwells:

I will bless her provisions with riches, I will satisfy her with bread.

And in another place he says, speaking to the same nation:

He has granted you peace on your frontiers, He has fed you on the finest wheat.

Seriously, an increase of mutual love is beyond all things because it dispenses charity near and far, honestly and joyfully, without suspicion of unworthiness. Hereafter, we shall obtain that celestial reward which we have shown is prepared for the man of charity.