But because it carries with it the biographically-conceived dedication to the Conde de Lemos, we are grateful to Cervantes for his last romance. In it we read of the return journey from the famous town of Esquívias--“famous for a thousand things, one for its illustrious families, and another for its most illustrious wines”--on which Cervantes tells us he was overtaken by the grey student on the little she-ass. His chance companion having addressed him as “the all famous, the merry writer, and, indeed, the joy of the muses,” they resumed their journey, in the course of which the infirmity of the merry writer was touched upon. “At which,” says Cervantes, “the good student checked my mirth in a moment: ‘This malady is the dropsy, which not all the water of ocean, let it be ever so sweet drinking, can cure. Let your worship, Señor Cervantes, set bounds to your drink, not forgetting to eat, for so without other medicine you will do well.’ ‘That many have told me,’ answered I, ‘but I can no more give up drinking for pleasure than if I had been born for nothing else. My life is slipping away, and, by the diary my [Illustration: DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO, ON THE ROAD TO TOBOSO. _Paris, 1868._ _59th Edition._] pulse is keeping, which at the latest will end its reckoning this coming Sunday, I have to close my life’s account. Your worship has come to know me in a rude moment, since there is no time for me to show my gratitude for the goodwill you have shown me.’” In a letter to his “very illustrious lord,” the Archbishop of Toledo, dated 26th March, 1616, Cervantes wrote: “If for the malady which affects me there could be any relief, the repeated marks of favour and protection which your illustrious person bestows on me would be sufficient to relieve me: but, indeed, it increases so greatly that I think it will make an end of me, although not of my gratitude.” In his valedictory dedication to the Conde de Lemos he speaks of himself as “with one foot in the stirrup, waiting the call of death.” “Yesterday,” he continues, “they gave me extreme unction, and to-day I am writing. The time is short, my agonies increase; my hopes diminish.” And then comes his brave, blithesome, parting message: “Good-bye, humours; good-bye, pleasant fancies; good-bye, merry friends; for I perceive I am dying, in the wish to see you happy in the other life.”