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.
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