Having reached Madrid in due course he made some necessary purchases. First of all he bought a bicycle from Singer’s agents in the Puerta del Sol, also some good road maps and all the necessary tools and materials for repairing any accident that might happen to his machine. Then a good medicine chest and some well-selected medical appliances to enable him to be useful to any sick folk he might fall in with. A few books, dictionaries, grammars, and guides were added to his slender baggage and sent forward to Granada to the Hotel Washington Irving, where he determined to remain till he should decide his future course of life. He knew the cholera was raging at this city, and without rashness, yet with confidence in God and the wisdom of sanitary precautions which he should adopt, he decided to do what he could to help the dreadful misery that hung over the unfortunate city. His work at St. Bernard’s had familiarized him with the terrible disease on its last visitation of London, and he trusted to the measures which had been followed there to keep him from danger in Spain. At Madrid he wrote to his father, telling him the exact state of affairs, and assuring him that he had fled from temptation that could not be safely parreyed with, but was better conquered by flight. A few months later he received a reply from the Major, who so far from being annoyed at his son’s conduct, praised him for it. “You have done what the Lord Gautama Buddha felt compelled to do. When he left his royal home, and in the night passing through the dimly lighted pavilions where the sleeping Nātch girls lay, conceived an overpowering loathing for worldly pleasure, and was assailed in vain at the outset of his great renunciation by the voice of the tempter Māra urging him to cling to all the good things he was giving up, he set an example which I rejoice to know my son has followed. You are seeking the Nirvana. Do not think yourself singular in this step; one cannot be saved without a renunciation.” Elsworth thought of a higher example and a nobler Prince, who left His throne to teach us the way of salvation; but was glad he had the approbation of his father. No one else except his lawyers, knew of his whereabouts; and he asked his father and agents not to give the curious inquirer any clue to his place of retreat. Ever since as a boy he had read “Washington Irving” and Mr. Prescott’s “Conquest of Granada,” he had longed to see that celebrated city of which one Spanish proverb declares, “He is loved of God who lives in Granada,” and another, that “He who has not seen Granada has seen nothing.”