Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. In 1568 there came'to Madrid - charged with a message of condolence from the pope to Philip II, on the death of his son Don Carlos, and with sundry complaints respecting de fault of allegiance to Rome - the Cardinal Acquaviva, who, though only in his twenty-fifth year, had already earned a name for culture and a good disposition to letters. With him Cervantes took service as a camarero, or page, - an employ ment held to be no humiliation in that age, even to young men of noble birth, - returning in the suite of his patron to Rome by way of Valencia, Barcelona, and the south of France. Apparently, the post was not to the taste of one in whom the sight of Italy - then for the greater part a fief of Spain awakened more of warlike than of poetic ambition.