receive me into the rank of Knight, enjoying the privilege of seniority and of eligibility to all the knight commanderies 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

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.

V

For a time following Contreras, in fine spirits and employed 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

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 Commandery 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

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 years 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 translation 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 was 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 Mérimée 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

host of clever quill-drivers who write easily and possess a style, but whose ideas are drowned in a river of harmonious words. Amiel called the medium of expansion a necessary pâte, 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 medicaments 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.

Research 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