Playwrights and actors were banned, and four months before the death of Philip II. all the theatres were closed. The clouds lifted slightly. In 1595 'Miguel Cervantes Saavedra of Seville' won the prize offered by the Dominicans of Zaragoza for a series of poems in honour of St. Hyacinthus. He appears to have earned his living at this period as a tax-gatherer. Sometimes he was to be found at Pacheco's house, and at the Casa Pilatos. Cervantes discerned the genius of Herrera, and the two poets became friends. A sonnet in praise of Herrera was written by Cervantes. Fresh trouble beset the unfortunate author. 'About this period Cervantes fell into the first of his money troubles,' writes Mr. Watts, in his _Miguel de Cervantes_, 'in connection with his office. Having to remit a sum of 7,400 _reals_ from Seville to Madrid, he entrusted it to the hands of one Simon Freire, as his agent. Freire became bankrupt, and fled from Spain. This involved Cervantes in a debt to the crown, for which, being unable to pay, he was thrown into prison. Having reduced the amount by what he recovered from the bankrupt estate of Freire to 2,600 _reals_, Cervantes was released after a detention of three months. Neither then, nor at any time afterwards--although the affair hung over him to trouble him for many years--was there any charge implicating his own personal rectitude.' Cervantes' pictures of the seamy side of Sevillian life were drawn vividly in his _picaresco_ novels. The tales contain phrases in _Germania_, or thieves' argot, showing that the author closely observed his types of low life. It was not until he had reached his fifty-seventh year that he finished the first part of _Don Quixote de la Mancha_. The great romance was partly written during Cervantes' imprisonment in La Mancha. There are three versions of the circumstances that brought about his confinement. One account is that Cervantes made himself unpopular as a tax-gatherer. But could that be made a felony or misdemeanour meriting gaol? Another story relates how he became a factory-owner, and polluted the Guadiana with waste matter; while a third report ascribes his punishment to the offence of uttering satires upon a lady.