The low condition of the theatre in his time was a serious misfortune to Cervantes. It prevented him from obtaining, as a dramatic author, a suitable remuneration for his efforts, even though they were, as he tells us, successful in winning public favor. If we add to this, that he was now married, that one of his sisters was dependent on him, and that he was maimed in his person and a neglected man, it will not seem remarkable, that, after struggling on for three years at Esquivias and Madrid, he found himself obliged to seek elsewhere the means of subsistence. In 1588, therefore, he went to Seville, then the great mart for the vast wealth coming in from America, and, as he afterwards called it, “a shelter for the poor and a refuge for the unfortunate.”[123] There he acted for some time as one of the agents of Antonio de Guevara, a royal commissary for the American fleets, and afterwards as a collector of moneys due to the government and to private individuals; an humble condition, certainly, and full of cares, but still one that gave him the bread he had vainly sought in other pursuits. [123] “Volvíme á Sevilla,” says Berganza, in the “Coloquio de los Perros,” “que es amparo de pobres y refugio de desdichados.” Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 362. The chief advantage, perhaps, of these employments to a genius like that of Cervantes was, that they led him to travel much for ten years in different parts of Andalusia and Granada, and made him familiar with life and manners in these picturesque parts of his native country. During the latter portion of the time, indeed, partly owing to the failure of a person to whose care he had intrusted some of the moneys he had received, and partly, it is to be feared, owing to his own negligence, he became indebted to the government, and was imprisoned at Seville, as a defaulter, for a sum so small, that it seems to mark a more severe degree of poverty than he had yet suffered. After a strong application to the government, he was released from prison under an order of December 1, 1597, when he had been confined, apparently, about three months; but the claims of the public treasury on him were not adjusted in 1608, nor do we know what was the final result of his improvidence in relation to them, except that he does not seem to have been molested on the subject after that date.