All This He Told Me With Great Glee A Minute
Or Two Later.
When we got back to Argamasilla the Medico was already
awaiting us.
He conducted us to the house of the Quijanas,
where an old woman-servant, lamp in hand, showed the way down
a flight of steps into the dungeon. It was a low vaulted
chamber, eight feet high, ten broad, and twenty-four long,
dimly lighted by a lancet window six feet from the ground.
She confidently informed us that Cervantes was in the habit
of writing at the farthest end, and that he was allowed a
lamp for the purpose. We accepted the information with
implicit faith; silently picturing on our mental retinas the
image of him whose genius had brightened the dark hours of
millions for over three hundred years. One could see the
spare form of the man of action pacing up and down his cell,
unconscious of prison walls, roaming in spirit through the
boundless realms of Fancy, his piercing eyes intent upon the
conjured visions of his brain. One noted his vast expanse of
brow, his short, crisp, curly hair, his high cheek-bones and
singularly high-bridged nose, his refined mouth, small
projecting chin and pointed beard. One noticed, too, as he
turned, the stump of the left wrist clasped by the remaining
hand. Who could stand in such a presence and fail to bow
with veneration before this insulted greatness! Potentates
pass like Ozymandias, but not the men who, through the ages,
help to save us from this tread-mill world, and from
ourselves.
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