autumn of 1593 Cervantes lost his mother, and in the autumn of 1594 he visited Baza, where (as Sr. Rodríguez Marín has shown recently in an open letter addressed to me[99]) his old enemy Blanco de Paz was residing. As the population of Baza amounted only to 1537 persons at the time, the two men may easily have met: the encounter would have been worth witnessing, for Cervantes was a master of pointed expression. He passed on his dreary round to Málaga and Ronda, returning to his headquarters at Seville, where, most likely, he wrote the poem in honour of St. Hyacinth which won the first prize at Saragossa on May 7, 1595. As the prize consisted of three silver spoons, it did not greatly relieve his financial embarrassments. These rapidly grew worse. Cervantes had deposited public moneys with a Portuguese banker in Seville; the banker failed and fled, and, as Cervantes was unable to refund the amount, he was suspended. There is a blank in his history from September 1595 to January 1597, when the money was recovered from the bankrupt’s estate. Cervantes, however, was not restored to his post. This is not surprising; for, though most of us regard him with an affection as real as can be felt for any one who has been in his grave nearly three hundred years, even our partiality stops short of calling him a model official. He was not cast in the official mould. Cervantes, collecting oil and wrangling over corn in Andalusia, is like Samson grinding in the prison house at Gaza. Misfortune pursued him. The treasury accountants called upon him to furnish sureties that he would attend the Exchequer Court at Madrid within twenty days of receiving a summons dated September 6, 1597. Unable to find bail, he was imprisoned till the beginning of December, when he was released with instructions to present himself at Madrid within thirty days. He does not appear to have left Seville, and he neglected a similar summons in February 1599. This may seem like contempt of court, but no doubt the real explanation is that he had not the money to pay for the journey.