guilty of _lèse-majesté_ in Hurtado de Mendoza's fashion; but this is surmise, as is also a pendant story of his love passages with a Maid of Honour. It is certain that, on September 15, 1569, a warrant was signed for the arrest of one Miguel de Cervantes, who was condemned to lose his right hand for wounding Antonio de Sigura in the neighbourhood of the Court. There is nothing to prove that our man was the culprit; but if he were, he had already got out of jurisdiction. Joining the household of the Special Nuncio, Giulio Acquaviva, he left Madrid for Rome as the Legate's chamberlain in the December of 1568. He was not the stuff of which chamberlains are made; and in 1570 he enlisted in the company commanded by Diego de Urbina, captain in Miguel de Moncada's famous infantry regiment, at that time serving under Marc Antonio Colonna. It is worth noting that the _Galatea_ is dedicated to Marc Antonio's son, Ascanio Colonna, Abbot of St. Sophia. In 1571 Cervantes fought at Lepanto, where he was twice shot in the chest and had his left hand maimed for life: "for the greater honour of the right," as he loved to think and say with justifiable vainglory. That he never tired of vaunting his share in the great victory is shown by his frequent allusions to it in his writings; and it should almost seem that he was prouder of his nickname—the Cripple of Lepanto—than of writing _Don Quixote_. He served in the engagements before Navarino, Corfu, Tunis, the Goletta; and in all he bore himself with credit. Returning to Italy, he seems to have learned the language, for traces of Italian idioms are not rare even in his best pages. From Naples he sailed for Spain in September 1575, with recommendatory letters from Don Juan de Austria and from the Neapolitan Viceroy. On September 26, his caravel, the _Sol_, was attacked by Moorish pirates, and, after a brave resistance, all on board were carried as prisoners into Algiers. There for five years Cervantes abode as a slave, writing plays between the intervals of his plots to escape, striving to organise a general rising of the thousands of Christians. Being the most dangerous, because the most heroic of them all, he became, in some sort, the chief of his fellows, and, after the failure of several plans for flight, was held hostage by the Dey for the town's safety. His release was due to accident. On September 19, 1580, the Redemptorist, Fray Juan Gil, offered five hundred gold ducats as the ransom of a private gentleman named Jerónimo Palafox. The sum was held insufficient to redeem a man of Palafox's position; but it sufficed to set free Cervantes, who was already shipped on the Dey's galley bound for Constantinople.[16] He is found at Madrid on December 19, 1580, and it is surmised that he served in Portugal and at the Azores. There are rumours of his holding some small post at Oran: however that may be, he returned to Spain, at latest, in the autumn of 1582. And henceforth he belongs to literature.