^', 
 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SPANISH 
 ADVENTURER 
 
 S. GEISWOLD MOELEY 
 
 [Reprint from the University of California Chronicle, Vol. XVIII, No. 1] 
 

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SPANISH 
 ADVENTURER 
 
 S. Geiswold Morley 
 
 Standing in the midst of a tide of collectivism such as 
 the world has never before seen, most of us still feel a warm 
 thrill of pleasure when we read of some foot-loose, red- 
 blooded human animal whose energy was equalled only 
 by his social freedom. The blond beast in our town is a 
 wretched neighbor, but let him be transplanted to a distant 
 century and clime, and we experience a clandestine admira- 
 tion for his spirit and his works that bears no relation to 
 our twentieth century standard of private behavior. Today 
 only nations as a whole dare to be thoroughly mean, and 
 they are slowly nearing the point of circumspection. So 
 it is w^hen we wish to stir the Adam in our blood by the" 
 contemplation of some splendid explosion of human force, 
 we turn to Cortes, Cellini, or even Casanova. The unsought 
 alliteration seems to suggest that the letter C may be the 
 natural initial of an adventurous spirit crossed with an 
 itch for publicity. 
 
 I cite as witness Alonso de Contreras, whose autobio- 
 graphy has been unearthed and published, after reposing 
 nearly four centuries under the dust of a Madrid library. 
 Contreras was a professional fighter on land and sea, who 
 rose from nothing to be a Commander of the Knights of 
 Malta, no slight achievement in itself. Not one of the 
 shrewd climbers, he never thought large and never reached 
 
 a27575 
 
high diplomatic posts. He looked but a short distance in 
 advance; he was an insubordinate swashbuckler, a dread- 
 nought captain, afraid neither of man nor devil, yet with 
 a code of honor of his own, and a dash of piety that would 
 cause wonder were it not so common in that age. He 
 arrived too late to form one of the band of conquistadores, 
 but their spirit ran in his blood entire. Of such men 
 were the armies of Spain in her great days, and such a 
 type explains many victories. His life-story, told with the 
 utmost frankness, is to a degree a mirror of the time. More 
 completely, it is a mirror of a soldier's life in the continual 
 wars of the Renaissance; and that a soldier in those days 
 missed little of experience, be you the judge. 
 
 I 
 
 Our hero was born in 1582. By pure chance his official 
 name was Contreras, for that was his mother's name, 
 which he adopted when he first joined the army. After- 
 ward he wished to take back the surname of his father, but 
 it was then too late, for his service papers were made out 
 to Contreras. Before he left his home in Madrid he had 
 killed a school-mate with the knife of his writing-kit and 
 spent a year in exile for the crime. Only his youth saved 
 him from death — the first of many narrow escapes. He 
 was not yet fourteen, and had this past behind him, when 
 he shook off his mother's restraining hand, his father 
 being dead, and set out after the trumpets of the cardinal- 
 prince Albert archduke of Austria. He was only a camp- 
 follower, a hanger-on watching for scraps, but on the 
 first day he gambled away his last real and every rag of 
 clothes upon his body: '^ which clearly showed that I was 
 to be a soldier. ' ' In fact he contrived to pry open a place 
 as cook's boy, and was soon allowed to serve the king, 
 though under age. 
 
 With that began vicissitudes as varied as those of 
 Ulysses, and some were staged in the same scenes. The 
 Grecian archipelago was the region in which the young 
 
man first made his marks as an amphibious fighter. He 
 was proud of his intimate knowledge of its harbours and 
 inlets and also a little proud of the respect his name 
 inspired in its inhabitants. Eaiding the Turks was the 
 great game of the day, with the whole Mediterranean as 
 the field. Contreras fought now on Sicilian galleys, now on 
 those of the Knights of Malta, and began to enjoy the quick 
 prosperity of successful pirates. After one expedition * ' my 
 share of booty was a hat full to the brim of double reals, 
 with the which my spirit began to swell ; but within a few 
 days it was all gamed away and squandered." 
 
 A tavern brawl and a dead man sent him fleeing with 
 two companions from Palermo in a stolen boat; they had 
 not been in Naples a month when another street row drove 
 him to Malta, hidden in a ship's storeroom. We must be 
 just, and state that he himself shed no blood in these 
 affrays; had he been guilty, he would not have failed to 
 tell us, in his vivid, dialogued style that reads like Dumas. 
 Then began his close connection with the Order of St. John 
 of Jerusalem, also called the Knights of Malta and 
 Hospitallers. 
 
 At the age of nineteen he was singled out by the Grand 
 Master for his knowledge of the Archipelago and its lan- 
 guages to discover the objective of the great Turkish fleet 
 that every year left Constantinople to cruise about the east- 
 ern end of the Mediterranean. In certain years it raided 
 some unprotected spot in the southern Christian possessions. 
 So succesful was the young captain that with his one 
 galley he watched the course of the fifty-three hostile 
 vessels, outraced them to Keggio whither they were bound, 
 and gave the alarm. The General of the Sea found an 
 alert coast awaiting him and retired for the year with 
 heavy loss. This was only the first of a series of exploits 
 that made the name of "Captain Alonso" known and 
 respected in all the islands. 
 
 In one, Stampalia, where there was no Turkish governor, 
 he was by common consent the arbiter of all disputes : 
 
''for I never did them harm, but helped them whenever 
 I could ; when I had made a prize and could not carry it to 
 Malta, I gave the island the vessel and sold it the wheat or 
 rice and linen, which were the usual cargo; and such was 
 their gratitude that whenever they had a weighty dispute, 
 they said to each other: 'let us wait for Captain Alonso' 
 (thus they called me), 'that he may decide.' And when I 
 came though they were compelled to wait a year, they told 
 me the facts and I gave sentence, which they abided by as 
 if I had been a royal council; and then we all dined 
 together. ' ' 
 
 To this island the Captain restored its priest or papas, 
 after he had been stolen by a piratical Christian and held 
 for ransom. A grand ceremony was held in the church 
 to celebrate his return. Contreras was placed in a chair 
 alone, with a carpet beneath his feet. "The priest cast 
 incense upon me and then kissed me upon the cheek, and 
 then came all the people, men and women, doing the 
 same; true it is that some of the latter were handsoi^ie, 
 whose kisses I was not sorrj^ to get, for with them I was 
 compensated for the many I had taken from bewhiskered 
 lips — and so bewhiskered ! ' ' Then the islanders wished 
 him to stay and be their ruler, and to marry the daughter 
 of their head man. They would even have kept him by 
 force, but his crew learning the affair, unshipped a cannon 
 and set it up on land to cover the town; so that in the 
 end the Greeks were fain to let their hero depart, with 
 many presents. 
 
 His craft and daring were limitless. Once he escaped 
 two galleys by signaling from his masthead to a Christian 
 fleet which did not exist; the Turks took alarm and fled. 
 Again, being out of fresh water on the coast of Tripoli 
 and finding the well guarded he raised a flag of truce 
 and after parley exchanged twenty-seven shields-full of 
 ship's biscuit for as many casks of water. He buried on 
 the beach some of his sailors who had been killed in the 
 skirmish ; next morning they had been uncovered and their 
 
noses and ears cut off ''as a present to Mahomet." "I in 
 my anger told them I would do the same to two prisoners 
 that I had. They replied they would rather have ten 
 sequins than thirty Moors; and so in their presence I cut 
 off the ears and noses of the captives and threw them on 
 the ground saying: 'take these too!' and tying the two 
 prisoners back to back I put out to sea and before their 
 eyes threw them in, and went toward Alexandria." 
 
 In another year, when it was learned that the Grand 
 Turk was preparing an armada and that a certain Jewish 
 collector of Salonica was sure to know of its destination, 
 Contreras was sent to kidnap him, "as if I were to go to 
 a market for some pears." He did his errand. As a 
 result of the expedition the Captain's picture was dis- 
 tributed by the Turks throughout the whole East and 
 Barbary, with an awful punishment promised him if cap- 
 tured. He was never taken, but his pilot less lucky was 
 seized within four months. He was flayed alive and his 
 skin stuffed with straw, suspended over the gate of Rhodes. 
 Such were the risks of the age. 
 
 The acquirement of riches was, as may be supposed, 
 the last thought of Contreras. When he reached port 
 with one of his fine prizes, he took care to set aside a portion 
 for the church of Nuestra Senora de la Gracia; the rest 
 went "tout aux tavernes et aux fiUes." Not the least of 
 his merits as an author is the lively and intimate picture 
 he presents of the life led by the Knights of St. John in 
 that degenerate day, after they had become rather pirates 
 than hospitallers, when Malta was one of the world's great 
 slave marts, and the vows of chastity, poverty and obedi- 
 ence were mere sounds upon the lips. 
 
 II 
 
 One day a vessel bound for Spain touched at Malta. 
 "Remembering my country and my mother, to whom I 
 had never written nor sent any news of myself, I deter- 
 mined to ask leave of absence from the Grand Master, who 
 
granted it unwillingly, touching his face to mine as we 
 took leave." 
 
 In an evil hour the headstrong Captain forsook the vessel 
 he commanded and the sea that jdelded him such easy gain. 
 On land he could no longer pillage Turks, the sworn enemies 
 of Christendom. He was no longer his own master, as he 
 was when once his ship put Malta below the horizon. 
 Contreras looked in upon his mother, who had re-married, in 
 spite of the sixteen offspring of her first experience. She 
 was afraid of her big soldier son, lest he should disapprove 
 of his step-father ; but he recommended obedience and went 
 his way. As no captaincy was vacant in the Spanish army, 
 he accepted the post of ensign in a company, and was sent 
 to drum up recruits in Andalusia. Of his adventures in 
 this station it is better not to speak, but they were neither 
 few nor insipid. At Hornachos, a village of moriscos in 
 Extremadura, he discovered a large deposit of muskets 
 and bullets in a private house. He reported them to the 
 royal commissioner, who told him to say nothing. This 
 affair contained the germs of serious danger, but they did 
 not develop for five years. He wounded his captain in an 
 inpromptu duel, feminae causa and was not punished for 
 it. Soon after, the company was placed on a peace footing, 
 and Contreras obtained service in Sicily, then and much 
 later Spanish soil. His skill at sea was remembered, and 
 he was sent on a privateering expedition that brought him 
 wealth enough to keep a stable. On a previous occasion 
 he had replied, when invited to mount a horse that ''he 
 was accustomed to ride nothing but a ship." 
 
 In 1606, according to history, the united forces of Sicily 
 and Malta, commanded by Juan de Padilla, undertook the 
 capture of Hammamet, a town south of Tunis. The expedi- 
 tion ended in a great disaster, and I wish Contreras* 
 account of the failure were not too long to transcribe, for 
 it might stand as a classic description of panic in war. The 
 troops landed and stormed the walls, as per orders, and 
 began to collect booty within, while seven hundred men 
 
stood guard outside. Then, without command or method, 
 no one knew why, a few began to re-embark in the small 
 boats. The word passed from one to another, the guard 
 broke ranks, and all the soldiers, losing their discipline 
 completely, crowded to the shore. The Moors, who had 
 hidden in cisterns or fled, returned to the attack; they 
 mounted the walls and turned the cannon against the 
 stupefied Christians: ''for if God had decreed it, how- 
 could we keep our judgment? and He took it from all of 
 us that day." A storm of sudden violence arose, making 
 it impossible for the boats to approach the shore; and 
 there stood the huddled mass of Christians twelve hundred 
 or more, while a bare hundred Moors struck them down 
 with lances and swords and clubs. Some rushed into the 
 sea, not even thinking to remove their heavy armor; of 
 them was Contreras, and he was one of two picked up, 
 half drowned, by a small boat. Juan de Padilla himself 
 was drowned, and it was a sad fleet that returned to the 
 islands. ''We reached Palermo with the galleys' lights 
 draped in black and the awnings spread, though it was 
 August, rowing so aimlessly that it was a pity to see; 
 and more when so many boats came to ask, one for a 
 husband, and others for a son or a comrade or a friend, 
 and we must needs answer : ' they are dead ; ' for it was true ; 
 and the shrieks of the women made the oars of the galleys 
 to weep." 
 
 The captain's only matrimonial experience ended like- 
 wise in catastrophe. He relates it entire in a scant page, 
 more laconically than is his wont, and with evident feeling. 
 He married a lady from Madrid, the widow of a rich 
 judge. They lived together happily more than a year and 
 a half; then he was informed that a friend, "to whom I 
 would have trusted my soul, ' ' was supplanting him. ' ' And 
 I, who was not sleeping, pretended to take no note, until 
 their fortune had it that one morning I found them 
 together. They died. May God keep their souls in heaven 
 if at that moment they repented. There was much more 
 
10 
 
 to the matter, but I write even this unwillingly. I will only 
 say that of all the property I took not a cent, naught but 
 my own service papers; all the rest went to a son by her 
 first husband." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The soil of Spain has in all times produced two 
 flowers, wholly distinct in color and aroma. The first is 
 the white lily of mysticism, struggling up toward the blue 
 sky with a power of aspiration and a depth of yearning 
 known only to the greatest minds and hearts. Saint 
 Theresa and Luis de Leon were the chosen fruit of the 
 spirit, but they were not alone. The second is the red 
 creeper of roguery, the very essence of realistic unscrupul- 
 ousness, delighting in filth, aiming only at immediate 
 pleasure. In fiction the picaros were called Lazarillo de 
 Tormes, Guzman de Alfarache, Paul of Segovia; and in 
 life they could not be numbered. But the white lily and 
 the red vine both plunged their roots into the same soil, 
 were both nourished by the same rich nature, the chief 
 ingredient of which is passion, unbridled southern passion, 
 direct and unashamed. 
 
 These refiections were suggested by Captain Contreras 
 himself, creature of passion if such there ever were. In 
 his own nature he bore the germs of both its diverse off- 
 shoots. His life as a whole reads like a picaresque romance, 
 and one episode in it like the conversion of Loyola. A 
 mystic Don Alonso certainly was not, but his religion, never 
 disowned, went beneath the skin. In the year 1608 he 
 returned to Madrid to solicit a post. Blocked by the notor- 
 ious favorite Rodrigo Calderon, he had the temerity to 
 appeal direct to Philip III at the Escurial. For his trouble 
 he was ordered not to set a foot in the Escurial again on 
 pain of death. "And I went riding back to Madrid, and 
 in those seven leagues I took reckoning with myself, and 
 resolved to go into the desert to serve God, and no longer 
 Court nor Palace." 
 
11 
 
 ' * I bought what is needful for an hermitage ; hair-cilice, 
 scourge, sack-cloth for a frock, a sun-dial, many penitential 
 books, seeds, a skull and a little hoe." Thus equipped, 
 behold him setting forth for the Moncayo, a large mountain 
 mass on the border between Old Castile and Aragon. The 
 customs inspectors open his sack, and, seeing the imple- 
 ments, are horrified: " 'Sir, whither go you with this?' I 
 said: 'To serve another King a space, for I am tired.' 
 And they, seeing I was not poor, pitied me ; above all my 
 mule-boy, who wept like a child." But he was not to be 
 dissuaded by tears, nor by the entreaty of some friendly 
 knights of Malta on the way, nor by the sermons of the 
 bishop of Tarazona, "setting forth the thousand obstacles 
 and my youth;" nor by an old friend, the corregidor of 
 Agreda, "who almost changed my intention." In spite 
 of all he perched his hermitage on a mountain slope half 
 a league from the town of Agreda. Nearby there was 
 a monastery of barefoot Franciscans, and he adopted their 
 habit. He thus describes the life he led. 
 
 ' ' Every day I came to the monastery to hear mass, and 
 was besieged by the friars to join them, but I would not. 
 Saturdays I entered the city and begged alms; I took no 
 money, but oil, bread and garlic, which were my food; 
 for I ate three times a week a mess of garlic and bread and 
 oil, all cooked together, and the other days bread and 
 water and many herbs that are on that mountain. I con- 
 fessed and received the sacrament every Sunday. I took the 
 name of Brother Alonso of the Mother of God. Some 
 days the friars invited me to eat with them, to the end 
 of persuading me to join their order ; and when they saw 
 it was not to be done, they beset me to leave off the habit 
 or frock of their order that I wore. They succeeded in 
 that, and I had to change my garb, much against my will, 
 and put on that of the Victorine Friars; and I believe 
 that if there had been any of their order in the neighbor- 
 hood I would have had the same trouble; so great desire 
 had these friars to make me enter religion! 
 
12 
 
 ''I spent about seven months in this life, without a 
 bad word being said of me ; I Avas perfectly content, and I 
 promise you that if I had not been dragged away by force as 
 I was, and if I had stayed there till today, many a miracle 
 I should have performed." 
 
 What was the brute force that came to tear Brother 
 Alonso of the Mother of God from the path of sainthood, 
 and set him down once more in the midst of the worldly 
 turmoil that he had renounced? Nothing else than that 
 forgotten deposit of arms which, long before, he had seen in 
 the house of a morisco at Hornachos, and had not reported, 
 since the royal commissioner had bidden him to be silent. 
 
 The unhappy descendants of the Moors, whose natural 
 hatred of their victorious enemies had not been mitigated 
 by just or wise treatment after the conquest of Granada, 
 were soon to be driven from the land their ancestors had 
 won nine centuries before. Harassed in their home life, 
 in their beliefs, in their methods of earning bread, they 
 were treated by the Christian populace more as slaves and 
 outlaws than as fellow-Spaniards. In 1609 the attempt 
 at their wholesale expulsion was to be made, and the 
 moriscos suspecting a coup the nature of which they were 
 unable to learn, were restless, accumulated stores of weapons 
 and infested the highways. The authorities were more than 
 ever alert to frustrate a rebellion. This state of tension is 
 the explanation of Contreras' curious and dangerous 
 adventure. 
 
 While working peacefully one day about his hermitage, 
 he was astonished to see a body of armed men approach. 
 He was seized, manacled and taken to Madrid. Some time 
 passed before he learned his offense. It was five years 
 after the discovery of weapons at Hornachos, and some 
 ferret-nosed Dogberry had just heard of the case and 
 decided to explore it. The ensign had learned of the arms 
 and had not reported them; ergo, he had taken a bride. 
 He was now in retirement between Castile and Aragon, 
 in a mountainous stronghold; ergo, he was himself the 
 
13 
 
 king of the moriscos, and was about to head an uprising ! 
 Such was police logic of the day, and it nearly cost the 
 Captain his life. He was thrown into prison, questioned, 
 taken to Hornachos to identify the house, confronted with 
 the commissioner, who denied in toto, tortured (not too 
 severely) and finally released on parole. Contreras, eager 
 above all to clear his name and that of his family, broke 
 parole to gather testimony from some of the soldiers who 
 had been with him at the time. Then he returned to Madrid 
 to give himself up, and found that he had done the best 
 thing possible. He was at once acquitted, given a goodly 
 sum of money and a captain's commission in Flanders. 
 The commissioner, who was rich and had backers of high 
 station, was let off with a short exile. Thus ended our 
 hero's only attempt to behave like a saint. 
 
 IV 
 
 To relate all of his adventures would, as he says himself, 
 take more paper than there is in Genoa. He served two 
 years in Flanders in time of peace. Having returned to 
 Malta, his early haunt, he was admitted to the lowest of 
 three ranks of Hospitallers, as serving brother, "although 
 some Knights opposed me, saying that I had two notorious 
 murders to my name." He was thereby entitled to wear 
 the habit and to be tried by the courts of his Order instead 
 of the royal tribunals when at fault, which was not seldom. 
 He was once imprisoned for a brawl, and twice, like Cellini, 
 poisoned by his enemies. Luck and a stout constitution 
 brought him off alive and free. In 1618 he was sent to the 
 West Indies in command of two vessels, and had the advant- 
 age, so he says, in an engagement with the ships of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh. Soon after, he relieved the garrison of 
 Mehediah, on the Moroccan coast. With one small vessel 
 he passed through the besieging fleet and carried supplies 
 to the town. It was volunteer work, which others had 
 refused, and it procured Contreras a personal interview 
 
14 
 
 with the king, then Philip IV, and promises of advance- 
 ment that were never fulfilled. It is true that he Avas offered 
 a present of three hundred ducats with an expression of 
 regret that the sum was not larger, but he declined, saying : 
 * ' Sir, I do not need money if it is so scarce ; I seek fame, 
 not monej^" 
 
 It is singular that the middle portion of the autobio- 
 graphy is written with less wealth of detail than the pages 
 devoted to the joyous, harum-scarum youth. Perhaps the 
 writer felt at liberty to give his imagination freer reign in 
 the years more distant from him. Then too, as he ap- 
 proached middle life his deeds were no less bold, but they 
 were isolated by long intervals of waiting for positions, 
 of dancing attendance on the court, of wire-pulling, neces- 
 sary but irksome, of complaints against his superiors. 
 Contreras was not tactful; he was a forthright man who 
 settled a dispute by the sword whenever possible. He 
 always preferred the justice of might to that of the ap- 
 pointed tribunals, and he was more likely to win by the 
 former method. If he was ever worsted in a hand-to-hand 
 combat, he does not tell us of it. No cowboy could take 
 greater pride in being the first to draw. 
 
 For sixteen months he was governor of the island of 
 Pantellaria, lying between Sicily and Tunis. As he had 
 little occupation there, Contreras' religious fervor revealed 
 itself once more, this time in an architectural manifestation. 
 He renovated an old thatched church on the island, pro- 
 cured wood from Sicily for the roof, and even, modest 
 Mecaenas, imported a painter to decorate the interior. 
 The shrewd Captain may have harbored an ulterior motive 
 beneath his zeal. Very soon he visited Rome and obtained 
 from Pope Urban VIII in a private interview what had 
 been refused to his previous petitions. He was granted a 
 brief excusing him from the residence and caravans re- 
 quired of a member of the order of St. John before he was 
 eligible to a commandery ; much more, another brief ' ' which 
 orders the Religion, in consideration of my services, to 
 
15 
 
 receive me into the rank of Knight, enjoying the privilege 
 of seniority and of eligibility to all the knight command- 
 eries and dignities which the Knights of Justice can 
 obtain." It was not easy to persuade the Papal ministers 
 to concur in these unprecedented favors, but with the aid 
 of the Spanish ambassador their consent was gained. As 
 soon as possible Contreras returned to Malta to present 
 his briefs. ''Without delay they were obeyed, at which 
 they armed me Knight with all due solemnities, and gave 
 me a Bull which I esteem more than I would to be a son of 
 Prince Carlos, in which it is said that for my notable deeds 
 and exploits I was armed Knight, having right to all the 
 commanderies and dignities enjoyed by all the Knights of 
 Justice. That day there were double rations at a great 
 banquet. ' ' 
 
 To appreciate fully how great was the distance traversed 
 by Contreras in rising from pot-boy to Knight of Justice 
 of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, wholly by his own 
 efforts, it is necessary to recall the rules of the proud and 
 ancient Order, then, it is true, somewhat relaxed by the 
 license of the time. No doubt Contreras had taken the 
 vows of poverty, chastity and obedience when he was 
 received as serving brother ; he had kept — possibly the last. 
 His fellow Knights were in no better case, and there was 
 another obstacle of greater moment. The members were 
 divided into three ranks. Knights, Chaplains and Sergeants 
 or Serving Brothers, the first and last being open to laymen. 
 It was not difficult to become a serving brother ; Contreras 
 had been admitted in his thirtieth year. The Knights 
 were of two classes. Knights of Justice and Knights of 
 Grace. The latter might be choosen for superlative merit, 
 but the former were required to prove sixteen quarterings 
 of nobility ; thus they were Knights ' ' justly. ' ' Don Alonso 
 never in his most boastful moments claims for his parents 
 anything more than honorable poverty and untarnished 
 Christianity (for the authorities had investigated his 
 ancestry to the fourth generation at the time of his trial 
 
16 
 
 for rebellion, and had reported no trace of Moor or Jew). 
 On merit only he should have been elected a Knight of 
 Grace. The special favor dispensed him by the Pope 
 consisted in the command that he should be admitted to 
 the highest, the exclusively noble rank. This took place 
 about the year 1627. 
 
 For a time following Contreras, in fine spirits and em- 
 ployed in a region where he was given a free hand, found 
 again the devil-may-care spirit and the vivid narrative 
 inspiration of his youth. He served in the Spanish force 
 occupying the kingdom of Naples, and was stationed often 
 in outlying districts where he was his own master as he 
 had been when captain of a privateer. I cannot forbear 
 to offer one example of his methods, and, as best I may, 
 of his style. 
 
 ' ' In the Casales of Capua there is a usage most harmful 
 to the poor; and it is that the rich folk who are liable to 
 have soldiers billeted upon them send one of their sons 
 into the first holy orders, and to him make over all their 
 property. With this they are exempted from furnishing 
 lodgings, and the Archbishop defends them because they 
 maintain him. I reported this knavery to the Bishop and 
 he told me it was just. That angered me, and I withdrew 
 my soldiers from the houses of the poor and took them to 
 the rich, and asked: 'Which is the room of the priest?' 
 They said: 'This one;' and I: 'It shall remain as spotless 
 as the day of the Lord; and these others, who sleeps in 
 them?' 'Sir, the father, the mother, the sisters and the 
 brothers;' and in them I quartered three or four soldiers. 
 They protested to the Archbishop and he wrote me saying 
 I should have a care, for I was excommunicated. I laughed 
 at it; and one of those 'wild priests' (so they are called 
 in that kingdom, because they have only the first orders, 
 and many of them are married), bestrode a mare to com- 
 
17 
 
 plain to the Archbishop ; but a soldier jerked the horse back, 
 and told him to wait till I had been informed. The mare 
 knew the bit no better than the master Latin, so she reared 
 and cast him on the ground, which did him no good. Hurt 
 as he was, he went on to enter his complaint; at that the 
 Bishop sent me word I was excommunicated by virtue of 
 the chapter quisquis pariente del diablo. I made answer: 
 'Take care what you do; I know nothing of the chapter 
 quisquis, and as for being a relative of the devil, I am not 
 one nor was ever such in my ancestry; beware, for if I 
 submit to being excommunicated, no man is safe from me 
 unless he hides in the fifth sphere; to that end God gave 
 me ten fingers on my two hands and one hundred and fifty 
 Spanish soldiers!' He received my letter, and gave me 
 no answer, but sent word to the Casales that they should 
 urge the Viceroy to remove me, and that he would do the 
 same, for he saw no other remedy. They got me out as soon 
 as might be; but meanwhile the rich paid dearly without 
 a single poor man suffering. And my rule was not so short 
 but it lasted more than forty days." 
 
 Contreras' Italian service was ended by a quarrel with 
 his superior, the Count of Monterrey, who had nevertheless 
 done him many favors and whom he admired extremely, 
 as he tells us at some length. The Captain fell in with one 
 of his many brothers, and persisted in trying to raise him 
 to honors that he did not deserve, we must suppose, for 
 none of the authorities would grant the favors asked. 
 Contreras, with his usual obstinacy, disregarded the advice 
 of all his friends and well-wishers and left Naples sooner 
 than yield a jot. Within a few months he received a Com- 
 mandery in the Order of Malta. 
 
 The manuscript breaks off abruptly in the year 1633, 
 just as the author attempts once more to procure a place 
 for his unlucky brother. Several sheets are missing. How 
 much farther the autobiography extended in its original 
 form, we do not know. If, as Contreras states, he wrote 
 the greater part in the space of eleven days, most of the 
 
18 
 
 material being twenty years or more old, he either possessed 
 a wonderful memory, kept a diary or invented freely, for 
 there is more detail in the early j^ears than later. The 
 stirring events that occurred before 1610 are described 
 with as much freshness and verve as if they were not a 
 week old. Whichever was the method, he was a gifted 
 writer. 
 
 VI 
 
 I feel that I have done faint justice to one of the most 
 individual of books, evidently written for the public and 
 withheld from it so long. The one short volume contains 
 no end of quotable stories, but nothing less than a transla- 
 tion can convey the color of the original. The Captain's 
 particular art was the subjugation of rebellious recruits. 
 One must read how shrewdly he dealt with the thieves at 
 Ecija; with what a combination of diplomacy and courage 
 he quelled the mutineers at Cadiz ; how neatly he persuaded 
 his company to remain five days at Nola during an eruption 
 of Vesuvius, while ashes rained and lava flowed about them, 
 till orders came to withdraw. Nor w^as he awed by the 
 great. One of the most amusing passages tells how he 
 defied the governor of Romagna, planning to give him a 
 sound beating and then flee beyond his jurisdiction. And 
 even if we make allowance for the natural bravado of a 
 soldier-author, it appears that he faced the dignitaries of 
 the Spanish court and Philip IV himself, with the mettle 
 of a man who has dealt more wounds than he has received. 
 Each of these anecdotes, despatched in a graphic page, 
 would have furnished Merimee a story and Dumas a novel. 
 
 I have many times observed one point of similarity 
 between the productions of the greatest intellects and those 
 of the crude and uncultivated. Writers may be divided 
 into three layers: at the top the supreme thinkers, and at 
 the bottom the quite untrained. Between them lies a vast 
 
19 
 
 host of clever quill-drivers who write easily and possess 
 a style, but whose ideas are drowned in a river of harmon- 
 ious words. Amiel called the medium of expansion a neces- 
 sary pate, and regretted that he was not able to produce 
 it. It might be named an excipient, like that used by 
 pharmacists in compounding pills, to hold the true medi- 
 caments and give them bulk. Literature from the top and 
 bottom layers is alike in lacking make-weight. When we 
 read Montaigne or Bacon or Pascal we are astonished to 
 find an idea in every line, just symbol of the powerful 
 brain that conceived. An ordinary man may also, if he 
 write little, say nothing that is not of meaning. 
 
 Contreras falls in the latter class. Having certain deeds 
 to narrate, he did it with wise avoidance of the superfluous 
 and a skill in wording that is far above the average. His 
 haphazard style is the despair of a grammarian and the 
 delight of a lover of racy Castilian. To find an antecedent 
 for all his relatives or a subject for all his verbs is as hard 
 as to lay bare the motives of all his acts. But he was not 
 for nothing the contemporary of Cervantes and Quevedo; 
 the picturesque word falls from his pen without an effort, 
 although he says : ' ' Here goes my book, dry and unwatered, 
 as God created it and I was able, without rhetoric nor 
 quillets, formed only on the truth." It is a book that can 
 be read word by word. 
 
 Eesearch has not revealed the history of Alonso de 
 Contreras' final years. Historians of the period do not 
 mention him, although a few of his official petitions have 
 been found. He tells us that he was honored with the 
 friendship of the fertile playwright. Lope de Vega, whose 
 house he shared as guest during more than eight months. 
 "We know that Lope, phoenix of intellects and king of 
 improvisators, dedicated a drama to the Captain. In the 
 prefatory note the poet recounts the salient exploits of his 
 friend and promises to write a lengthy poem about them. 
 He never did, and perhaps the Captain was led by the 
 omission to set them down himself. The world was the 
 
30 
 
 gainer; no flowery octaves could match the soldier's jerky, 
 honest phrases. 
 
 We do not know when Don Alonso died, nor how. 
 ''Hung, king of an isle, governor of a city, monk, beggar, 
 brilliant officer?" asks the French translator; for in life 
 he had been all but the first. We do not know. But we 
 will take oath that the old warrior set his face to the foe, 
 and that the reaper did not conquer him without a struggle. 
 
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