This in the mind of Cervantes looking out upon his world. And with it, a parallel domain of literary expression: one that is not unrelated to the brutal picaresque and to the extravagant tales of chivalry: the mystic. Cervantes knew the renowned _Diálogos de Amor_ of León Hebreo. And he knew Santa Teresa, Luis de León, Luis de Granada. This man whom adversity for twenty years has silenced is a bookish man. But he has been a man of action. He has grown old with his own literary failure. But he has absorbed a century of literary success. He is no primitive. Mature in years and in events, he is the heir of a rich, various heritage of expression. When he was born, Carlos I was king. His youth spanned the age of Felipe II. While he fought and was exiled, the Escorial rose, a last pinnacle of stone, from the Castilian Guadarrama. Now, in Cervantes’ broken age, the grotesque Felipe III leads Spain. Spain has gone on the Crusade Isabel dreamed; and Spain has come to this. Cervantes looks back over the glorious madness of his land; and he has his earliest vision of the Knight: Quixote wearing a barber’s dish, mounted on a nag. For Spain was not like Europe at the dawn of chivalry. Europe then was dawn, itself. Old wines--the wines of the Prophets, of Plato and Saint Augustine--had raged in the young flesh of Teuton hordes. But Spain at this flush of her ambition was already old. Seven centuries of war with Islam, endless ages of conflict with a desert world have parched the skin and turned brittle the bone of this Quixotic hero, abroad in the world to make the world into the House of Christ. Cervantes looks at Spain. Outward splendor flings Spain’s canopy from Holland to Africa, from Florida to Santa Fe. Paul and the Apostles who voyaged over the world are dead fifteen hundred years; but Columbus charts his way to the Indies from study of the Scriptures. Roland blew his last horn six centuries since: but Cortés and Pizarro raze empires in Peru. The hermits of the Thebaid are buried under millennial dust; but Córdoba has its anchorites. Saint Anthony and Saint Elisabeth are old in Heaven; but here yesterday were Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa. Bernard of Clairvaux did not crush the Albigensians with more blood than Torquemada the Jews. Saint Louis of France announces Isabel of Spain. Pope Gregory has his brother--across seven hundred years--in Cisneros, Cardinal of Toledo.[24] Cervantes looks within Spain. It is a squalid land. Men pray while it lies sterile. Old soldiers are vagabonds on the roads. Farms are waste while the lazy lords watch for gold-filled galleons from the Indies. It is a bloodless land. Women give themselves to Christ, and their wombs shrink. Carlos and Felipe pour the blood of Aragon and Castile into the Flemish sea.