When the court returned to Madrid he and his family followed it, but we find no employment given by him to the printing presses of that city from 1604 to 1613, when he got published the collection of plays and interludes before mentioned. In the same year he published his twelve Exemplary Novels, [Footnote 18] dedicating them to his patron, Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, count of Lemos. This nobleman, in conjunction with Archbishop Sandoval, and the actor, Pedro de Morales, had succeeded (let us hope) in cheering the poet's latter years. In the preface he gives a portrait of himself in his sixty-sixth year, distinguished by his own charming style, always redolent of resignation, good-will, and good-nature. He pretends that a friend was to have got his portrait engraved to serve as frontispiece, but, owing to his negligence, he himself is obliged to supply one in pen and ink: [Footnote 18: The Lady Cornelia, Rinconete and Cortadillo, Doctor Glass-case, the Deceitful Marriage, the Dialogue of the Dogs Scipio and Berganza, the Little Gipsy Girl, the Generous Lover, the Spanish-English Lady, the Force of Blood, the Jealous Estremaduran, the Illustrious Scullery-Maid, and the Two Damsels.] "My friend might have written under the portrait--This person whom you see here, with an oval visage, chestnut hair, smooth open forehead, lively eyes, a hooked but well-proportioned nose, a silvery beard that, twenty years ago, was golden, large moustaches, a small mouth, teeth not much to speak of, for he has but six, all in bad condition and worse placed, no two of them corresponding to each other; a figure between the two extremes, neither tall nor short, a vivid complexion, rather fair than dark, somewhat stooped in the shoulders, and not very light-footed: this I say is the author of Galatea, Don Quixote de la Mancha, . . . commonly called Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. He was for many years a soldier, and for five years and a half in captivity, where he learned to have patience in adversity. He lost his left hand by a musket-shot in the battle of Lepanto, and ugly as this wound may appear, he regards it as beautiful, having received it {28} on the most memorable and sublime occasion which passed times have ever scene, or future times can hope to equal, fighting under the victorious banners of the son of that thunderbolt of war, Charles V. of blessed memory. Should the friend of whom I complain have no more to say of me than this, I would myself have composed a couple of dozen of eulogiums, and communicated them to him in secret," etc. THE CLOSING SCENE.