Loaded with chains, and guarded with unceasing vigilance, he was now kept for five months in the closest confinement, but the viceroy still refrained from visiting the defiance of his prisoner with stripes or personal indignity. As Cervantes has recorded, in his modest reference to this period of captivity in _Don Quixote_: “The only one who held his own with him (Hassan Pasha) was a Spanish soldier, called De Saavedra, to whom, though he did things which will dwell in the memory of those people for many years, and all for the recovery of his freedom, his master never gave him a blow, nor bade anyone to do so, nor even spoke to him an ill word, though for the least of the many things he did we all feared he would be impaled, as he himself feared more than once.” This story is confirmed by Father Haedo, who says that while the captivity of Cervantes was “one of the worst ever known in Algiers,” he was never beaten, or hurt, or abused in his person; and the worthy Benedictine monk, in his _Topografia e Historia General de Argel_ (1612), further declares that “had his (Cervantes’) fortune corresponded to his intrepidity, his industry, and his projects, this day Algiers would belong to the Christians; for to no other end did his intents aspire.” While we must deplore the wounds which Cervantes received in the wars, and sorrow over the duress he suffered in Algiers, it must be always remembered with pride that it was to his personal valour, and nobility in adversity, that we owe the full and particular account that we have of these years of his career. As he gained the commendation of Don Juan in action, he won in adversity “great fame, praise, honour, and glory among the Christians” in Algiers. And that the record of his unswerving loyalty to creed and country, his “mingled genius and greatness,” and his magnanimous refusal to inculpate anyone in his many attempts to escape, should not be lost, a base Dominican, one Blanco de Paz, circulated such calumnies against Cervantes that he demanded the charges should be investigated before Father Juan Gil. Cervantes had, at this time, been ransomed by the efforts of his family and the generosity of the local merchants, who supplemented the 600 ducats his mother and sister had managed to raise by a contribution of a further 400 ducats, with which Hassan Pasha was satisfied. The inquiry lasted for twelve days, and ended in the complete acquittal of Cervantes, who was declared to be deserving, for his conduct in captivity, of all the praises which he had received. The abstract of these proceedings, signed by Father Juan Gil, are still reserved in the archives of Simancas, and from these we obtain the materials for the biographical account of Cervantes’ career during his Algerine captivity. “Had there survived no other record than this of the life of Cervantes,” Mr. Watts justly remarks, “had he not written a line of the books which have made him famous, the