^', 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. Gay lord ^rl Makers Syracuse Nl 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. l8Dec56BC REC'D LD DEC 5 13-'. LD 21-100m-6,'56 (B9311sl0)476 General Library University of California Berkeley