he eked out a precarious existence by undertaking clerical work, and on the occasional alms doled out to him by his patrons. We know, from the evidence given at the inquiry before the Alcade at Valladolid, that he “wrote and transacted business,” and that his slender means were augmented by the sale of needlework made by the women of his household. His fame, as the author of _Don Quixote_, would give him entrance to the intellectual circle of Madrid, and there seems no reason to doubt the statement of his biographer, Navarrete, that he joined the Literary Society, known as the Selvages, which included the most eminent men of letters of Madrid in its membership. We learn that in 1609 he forearmed himself against his burial by becoming a lay brother of the Oratory of the Knights of Grace--a prudent precaution that was customary among men of letters of the time--where he had, as colleagues, Lope de Vega, and his good friend, Francisco de Quevedo, one of the few contemporary writers who never disclosed envy or pretended contempt for the author of _Don Quixote_. Of some of Cervantes’ other friends at this time it is not possible to speak in the same terms. Lope de Vega was always jealous of his genius and his comparatively limited meed of popularity; Luis de Leon, whom, Cervantes said, “I revere, adore, and follow,” and Fernando de Herrera were dead; Luis de Góngora disliked him, and the brothers Lupercio and Bartolomé Argénsola returned his good-natured eulogies with envy and evil works, and by their intriguing they prevented the Conde de Lemos from redeeming the promise of employment he had made Cervantes when that nobleman was appointed Viceroy of Naples. Cervantes also had friends among the painters of the period, and was warmly attached to the two then celebrated artists, Juan de Jaureguy and Francisco Pacheco. Our author tells us, in his prologue to _Novelas Exemplares_, that Jaureguy had painted his picture, and he also figured among the 170 portraits of eminent contemporaries, which Pacheco made in black and red chalk. This collection, which was presented by the painter to Olivares, the generous art patron and celebrated minister of Philip IV., was broken up after his death, and is now reduced to fifty-six portraits, but that of Cervantes is not among the survivors. Nor has any other pictured memorial of him been preserved. His good-humoured plaint that his publishers should have reproduced an engraving of Jaureguy’s picture on the first leaf of _Novelas Exemplares_ has since been echoed in all sincerity. Two hundred years after his death it suddenly dawned upon Spain that no portrait of this, one of her greatest sons, was in existence, or if such a work existed it has not yet been found.