A succession of disasters followed this ungallant jest. His brother, from whom he had long been separated, and whom he now found as a lieutenant on board the Saint John, in which he himself served, died in his arms of a wound received during a fight with the Dutch. Other great troubles crowded after this one. Storms scattered the unwieldy fleet; calamities of all kinds confounded prospects that had just before been so full of glory; and Lope must have thought himself but too happy, when, after the Armada had been dispersed or destroyed, he was brought back in safety, first to Cadiz and afterwards to Toledo and Madrid, reaching the last city, probably, in 1590. It is a curious fact, however, in his personal history, that, amidst all the terrors and sufferings of this disastrous expedition, he found leisure and quietness of spirit to write the greater part of his long poem on “The Beauty of Angelica,” which he intended as a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso.”[220] [220] One of his poetical panegyrists, after his death, speaking of the Armada, says: “There and in Cadiz he wrote the Angelica.” (Obras, Tom. XX. p. 348.) The remains of the Armada returned to Cadiz in September, 1588, having sailed from Lisbon in the preceding May; so that Lope was probably at sea about four months. Further notices of his naval service may be found in the third canto of his “Corona Trágica,” and the second of his “Philomena.” But Lope could not well return from such an expedition without something of that feeling of disappointment which, with the nation at large, accompanied its failure. Perhaps it was owing to this that he entered again on the poor course of life of which he had already made an experiment with the Duke of Alva, and became secretary, first of the Marquis of Malpica and afterwards of the generous Marquis of Sarria, who, as Count de Lemos, was, a little later, the patron of Cervantes and the Argensolas. While he was in the service of the last distinguished nobleman, and already known as a dramatist, he became attached to Doña Juana de Guardio, a lady of good family in Madrid, whom he married in 1597; and soon afterwards leaving the Count de Lemos, had never any other patrons than those whom, like the Duke de Sessa, his literary fame procured for him.[221]