The captive's owner proceeded with wonderful skill to raise the value of his goods. While the slave declared his poverty, and lowered his station in order to lower the terms of his ransom, the master affected to treat his victim with the greatest respect. He gave him almost enough of nourishment, and professed he was ruining himself for the other's advantage through pure deference and good-will; and slipped in a word as to his hopes of being repaid for his outlay. The prisoner might undervalue himself as much as he chose, "he was merely a private soldier." Ah, his master knew better; the man of the ranks was a general, the man before the mast a _caballero_, the simple priest an archbishop. "As for me,' said the captive Dr. Sosa, 'who am but a poor clerk, the need me bishop by their own proper authority, and _in plenitudine potestatis_. Afterward they appointed me the private and confidential secretary of the Pope. They assured me that I had been for eight days closeted with His holiness in a chamber, where we discussed in the most profound secrecy the entire affairs of Christendom. Then they created me cardinal, afterwards governor of Castel Nuovo at Naples; and at this present moment I am confessor to Her Majesty the Queen of Spain.' In vain Dr. Sosa renounced these honors. They produced witnesses, both Christian and Turks, who swore to having seen him officiating as cardinal governor." The letters of of Don John of Austria having been found on Cervantes, the poor soldier of Lepanto became at once a great lord, from whom a large ransom might be expected. They began with genuflexions, and frequently ended with the scourge, not in his case, however. Many poor wretches, to save themselves from the horrible treatment they endured, or expected to endure, became Mohammedans, on which they immediately obtained their liberty, were set on horseback, with fifty Janissaries on foot, serving as cortège, the king defraying the expense of the ceremony, bestowing wives on the hopeful converts, and offering them places among his Janissaries. Cervantes became the centre, round which the hopes of many poor captives were grouped. He made several attempts at evasion, and, strange to say, was not in any instance punished by his otherwise cruel master.