Juan Pardo - John Gray - Was The Sponsor, And The Witnesses Were "Baltazar Vazquez, The Sacristan, And I Who Baptized Him

And signed with my name," says Mr. Bachelor Serrano, who never dreamed he was stumbling into fame when he touched

That pink face with the holy water and called the child Miguel. It is my profound conviction that Juan Pardo brought the baby himself to the church and took it home again, screaming wrathfully; Neighbor' Pardo feeling a little sheepish and mentally resolving never to do another good-natured action as long as he lived.

As for the neophyte, he could not be blamed for screaming and kicking against the new existence he was entering, if the instinct of genius gave him any hint of it. Between the font of St. Mary's and the bier at St. Ildefonso's there was scarcely an hour of joy waiting him in his long life, except that which comes from noble and earnest work.

His youth was passed in the shabby privation of a poor gentleman's house; his early talents attracted the attention of my Lord Aquaviva, the papal legate, who took him back to Rome in his service; but the high-spirited youth soon left the inglorious ease of the cardinal's house to enlist as a private soldier in the sea-war against the Turk. He fought bravely at Lepanto, where he was three times wounded and his left hand crippled. Going home for promotion, loaded with praise and kind letters from the generous bastard, Don Juan of Austria, the true son of the Emperor Charles and pretty Barbara Blumberg, he was captured with his brother by the Moors, and passed five miserable years in slavery, never for one instant submitting to his lot, but wearying his hostile fate with constant struggles. He headed a dozen attempts at flight or insurrection, and yet his thrifty owners would not kill him. They thought a man who bore letters from a prince, and who continued cock of his walk through years of servitude, would one day bring a round ransom. At last the tardy day of his redemption came, but not from the cold-hearted tyrant he had so nobly served. The matter was presented to him by Cervantes's comrades, but he would do nothing. So that Don Roderick sold his estate and his sisters sacrificed their dowry to buy the freedom of the captive brothers.

They came back to Spain still young enough to be fond of glory, and simple-hearted enough to believe in the justice of the great. They immediately joined the army and served in the war with Portugal. The elder brother made his way and got some little promotion, but Miguel got married and discharged, and wrote verses and plays, and took a small office in Seville, and moved with the Court to Valladolid; and kept his accounts badly, and was too honest to steal, and so got into jail, and grew every year poorer and wittier and better; he was a public amanuensis, a business agent, a sub-tax-gatherer, - anything to keep his lean larder garnished with scant ammunition against the wolf hunger.

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