Michael Cervantes; and I wish I could pay here that devoir to his memory
and fame which squalid circumstance forbade me to render under the roof
that once sheltered him. One can never say enough in his praise, and
even Valladolid seems to have thought so, for the city has put up a
tablet to him with his bust above it in the front of his incredible
house and done him the homage of a reverent inscription. It is a very
little house, as small as Ariosto's in Ferrara, which he said was so apt
for him, but it is not in a long, clean street like that; it is in a bad
neighborhood which has not yet outlived the evil repute it bore in the
days of Cervantes. It was then the scene of nightly brawls and in one of
these a gentleman was stabbed near the author's house. The alarm brought
Cervantes to the door and being the first to reach the dying man he was
promptly arrested, together with his wife, his two sisters, and his
niece, who were living with him and who were taken up as accessories
before the fact. The whole abomination is matter of judicial record, and
it appears from this that suspicion fell upon the gentle family (one
sister was a nun) because they were living in that infamous place. The
man whose renown has since filled the civilized world fuller even than
the name of his contemporary, Shakespeare (they died on the same day),
was then so unknown to the authorities of Valladolid that he had great
ado to establish the innocence of himself and his household.
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