Cervantes, for they suggested the idea that the examination revealed something to his discredit. It reveals that Cervantes’s natural daughter, Isabel de Saavedra (whose mother, Ana Franca de Rojas, had died in 1599 or earlier), was now residing with her father; it proves that Cervantes was still poor, and that calumnious gossip was current in Valladolid; but there is not a tittle of evidence to show that any member of the Cervantes family ever heard of Ezpeleta till he came by his death. Cervantes had made for himself a great reputation, but _Don Quixote_ did not apparently enrich him: otherwise he would not have asked his publisher for an advance of 450 _reales_, as we know that he did at some date previous to November 23, 1607. However, we must renounce the pretension to understand Cervantes’s financial affairs. His daughter Isabel, who was unmarried in 1605, reappears in 1608 as the widow of Diego Sanz del Aguila, and as the mother of a daughter: in 1608 she married a certain Luis de Molina, and there are complicated statements respecting a house in the Red de San Luis from which it is impossible to gather whether the house belonged to Isabel, to her daughter, or to her father. We cannot wonder that Cervantes was the despair of the Treasury officials: these officials did, indeed, make a last attempt to extract an explanation from him on November 6 of this very year of 1608, and thenceforward left him in peace. He settled in Madrid to pass his serene old age. An atmosphere of devotion began to reign in the house in the Calle de la Magdalena where he lived with his wife and his sisters, Andrea and Magdalena. In 1609 he was among the first to join the newly founded Confraternity of the Slaves of the Most Blessed Sacrament; in the same year his wife received the habit of the Tertiaries of St. Francis, as also did Andrea who died four months later (October 9); in 1610 his wife and his surviving sister Magdalena both became professed Tertiaries of St. Francis. It would appear that Cervantes had been aided by the generosity of the Conde de Lemos, and he could not hide his deep chagrin at not being invited to join the household when Lemos was nominated to the viceroyalty of Naples in 1610. The new viceroy chose better than he knew. Cervantes applied himself more closely to literature which he had neglected (so far as publication goes) for the last five years, and, after the death of his sister Magdalena in 1611, the results of his renewed activity were visible. In 1612, when he became a member of the Academia Selvaje (where we hear of his lending a wretched pair of spectacles to Lope de Vega), he finished his _Novelas Exemplares_ which appeared next year. He published his serio-comic poem, the _Viage del Parnaso_, in 1614; in 1615 he issued a volume containing eight plays and eight interludes, and also published the Second Part of _Don Quixote_. It is curious that so many things which must have seemed misfortunes to Cervantes have proved to be