The next anecdote is of more interest; and displays the style in which justice was carried on in Spain. Cervantes wrote from his heart and from hitter experience; when he introduces; in one of his tales, the arrival of a corregidor at an inn; and says, "The inn-keeper and his wife were both frightened to death, for as when comets appear they always engender fear of disaster, so when the officers of justice enter a house of a sudden and unexpectedly, they alarm and agitate the consciences even of the innocent." It appears that at this time the tribunal of the _contaduria_ examined the treasury accounts with the greatest severity, emptied as it had been by the various wars which had been carried and by financial experiments which had failed. [Sidenote: 1597. Ætat. 50.] The inspector-general, of whom Cervantes was merely the agent, was sent for to Madrid to give in his accounts. He represented that the documents which served as vouchers were at Seville in the hands of Cervantes; upon this, without other form of trial, a royal order was sent to arrest him, and to send him under escort to the prison of the capital, where he was to be disposed of as the tribunal of accounts saw fit. Cervantes was accordingly thrown in prison. The deficit of which he was accused amounted only to 2644 rials, not quite 30_l_. He offered security for this sum, and was set at liberty, on condition that in thirty days he should appear before the _contaduria_, and liquidate his accounts. In all this, it is evident that no real accusation was levelled against Cervantes, and that it was only the clumsy and arbitrary proceedings of Spanish law that occasioned his imprisonment.