favors from the court and from the count-duke—whom he asked on numerous occasions for positions for his nephews and other members of his family—had died when Olivares famously announced: “The devil take those people from Cordoba.” He had no better luck with his work. Out of pride, he had always refused to publish anything, preferring to distribute his poems amongst his friends for them to read and publicize; then, when necessity did finally force him to publish, he died before he saw his books leave the press, and the Inquisition immediately ordered them to be confiscated as suspicious and immoral. And yet, although I never warmed to the man and disliked his particular brand of Latinate gibberish—all triclinia and grottoes—I still say that don Luis de Gongora was an extraordinary poet who, paradoxically, along with his mortal enemy Quevedo, did much to enrich this beautiful language of ours. These two cultivated and spirited men, each writing in very different styles, but with equal skill, breathed new life into Castilian Spanish, one with his linguistic richness and the other with his intellectual swagger. It could be said that this fruitful, pitiless battle between two literary giants changed the Spanish language forever.
We left don Pedro Calderon with some relatives and friends of his and continued down Calle Francos to Lope’s house—this was how everyone in Spain referred to it, with no need even to mention his glorious family name—for Quevedo had some messages to pass on to him from the palace. I turned to look behind me a couple of times, to see if we were being followed by that dark, cloakless ruffian; on the third time of looking, he had gone. A mistake perhaps, I told myself; my instinct, though, attuned to the violent mores of Madrid, told me that such mistakes smell of blood and steel on some dimly lit street corner. There were, however, other matters demanding my attention. One of these was the fact that don Francisco, as well as being commissioned by the count-duke to write a play, had been charged with composing a courtly ballad or two for the queen, to be performed at a party in the Salon Dorado—the Golden Room—in the Alcazar Palace. Quevedo had promised to take these ballads to the palace himself, because the queen wanted him to read them out loud to her and her ladies-in-waiting, and Quevedo, who was, above all, a good and loyal friend, had invited me to accompany him in the role of assistant or secretary or page or some such thing. I didn’t mind what title I was given as long as I saw Angelica de Alquezar—the maid of honor with whom, as you will recall, I was deeply in love.
The other matter was this visit to Lope’s house. Don Francisco de Quevedo knocked at the door and Lope’s maidservant, Lorenza, opened it. I knew the house already, and later, over the years, visited it often because of the friendship that existed between don Francisco and Lope, and between my master and certain other frequent visitors to that Phoenix of Inventiveness, among them his close friend Captain Alonso de Contreras and another younger man who was, unexpectedly, about to enter the scene. We walked into the hallway, down the passageway and past the stairs leading up to the first floor, where the poet’s little nieces were playing. (Years later, it was discovered that these were, in fact, Lope’s daughters by Marta de Nevares.) We emerged, at last, into the little garden where Lope was sitting on a wicker chair beneath the shade of a vine, next to the well and the famous orange tree that he tended with his own hands. He had just finished eating, and nearby stood a small table on which there were still the remains of a meal, as well as cool drinks and sweet wine in a glass pitcher for his guests. Lope was accompanied by three other men, one of whom was the aforementioned Captain Contreras, who wore the cross of Malta on his doublet and was always to be found at Lope’s house whenever he was in Madrid. My master and he were very fond of each other, for they had sailed together in the Naples galleys, and had met before that as youths, almost boys, when they both set off for Flanders with the troops of Archduke Alberto. At the time, Contreras was something of a ruffian, for at the tender age of twelve, he had already knifed one of his own kind and subsequently deserted from the army when the troops were only halfway to Flanders. The second gentleman, don Luis Alberto de Prado by name, was a secretary in the Council of Castile; he was from Cuenca and had a reputation as a decent poet; he was also a fervent admirer of Lope. The third was a handsome young nobleman with a youthfully sparse mustache; he must have been about twenty years old or so and wore a bandage round his head. When he saw us, he sprang to his feet in surprise, an emotion I saw replicated on Captain Alatriste’s face, for the latter immediately stopped where he was by the well and instinctively placed his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Well,” said the young man, “Madrid really is a small world.”
It certainly was. Only the previous morning, he and Captain Alatriste, ignorant of each other’s names, had fought a duel together. Even more remarkable, as everyone was about to discover, this young fighter’s name was Lopito Felix de Vega Carpio and he was the poet’s son, newly arrived in Madrid from Sicily, where he had served under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, having enlisted in the galleys when he was just fifteen. He was the illegitimate child—albeit acknowledged by Lope—from the latter’s affair with the actress Micaela Lujan; he had fought against Berber pirates, done battle with the French off the Iles d’Hyeres, and taken part in the liberation of Genoa, and now he was in Madrid, hoping to sort out the papers that would confirm him in the rank of ensign. He was also, it turned out, keeping watch on a certain lady’s window. Anyway, this present situation was damnably awkward. While Lopito gave a detailed account of what had happened, his bewildered father sat in his chair, his ecclesiastical gown still sprinkled with crumbs, and looked from one to the other, not knowing whether to be surprised or angry. Once recovered from their initial shock, Captain Contreras and don Francisco de Quevedo argued the case with reason and tact; my master, however, greatly upset, offered his apologies and made ready to leave at once, convinced that he would no longer be welcome in that house. Quevedo was saying:
“The boy is, in fact, to be congratulated. Crossing swords with the best blade in Madrid and coming away with only a scratch is either a mark of skill or very good luck.”
Captain Contreras confirmed that this was so and gave further evidence. He and Diego Alatriste had been in Italy together, and he knew that the only reason Alatriste ever failed to dispatch an opponent was because he chose not to. This and other arguments continued to be exchanged, but my master was still preparing to leave. He courteously bowed to Lope, gave his word that he would never have unsheathed his sword had he known his adversary to be Lope’s son, and then turned to go before Lope could say a word. At this point, Lopito de Vega intervened.
“Please, Father, allow the gentleman to stay,” he said.
He bore him no ill feeling at all, because he had fought like a true hidalgo right from the start.
“And although that last knife-thrust may not have been exactly elegant—well, so few are—he didn’t just leave me there like a dog. He bandaged my wound and was kind enough to send someone to fetch me and take me to a barber.”
These dignified words calmed the situation. The father of the wounded man ceased frowning; Quevedo, Contreras, and Prado all praised the young ensign’s discretion, which said much for himself and his purity of blood; Lopito described the incident in more detail this time and in jovial terms; and the conversation resumed its friendly tone, thus dissipating the heavy clouds that had been threatening to spoil that postprandial gathering and bring down Lope’s displeasure on my master, something that the latter would have keenly regretted, for he was a great admirer of Lope and respected him as he did few men. Finally, the captain accepted a glass of sweet Malaga wine, concurred with everything the others had said, and Lopito and he became firm friends. They would remain so for eight years, until ensign Lope Felix de Vega Carpio met his unhappy fate when he drowned after his ship was wrecked on an expedition to Ile Sainte-Marguerite. I will, however, have occasion to say more about him in this story, and possibly in a future episode, too, if I ever recount the role played by Lopito, Captain Alatriste, and myself, along with other comrades—some of whom you have met already and others whom you have not—in the attack on Venice launched by the Spanish for the second time in the century—an attempt to take the city and murder the doge and his cronies, who had given us so much trouble in the Adriatic and in Italy by ingratiating themselves with the pope and with Richelieu. But all in good time. Besides, Venice merits a book to itself.
We continued our pleasant conversation in the garden until late into the afternoon, and took advantage of this opportunity to observe Lope de Vega close to. I had met him once on the steps of San Felipe, when I was a young lad newly arrived in Madrid, and he had placed his hand on my head, almost as if in an act of confirmation. I imagine it must be difficult now to grasp just what an important figure the great Lope was in those days. He must have been about sixty-four then, and he still had a very gallant air about him, enhanced as it was by his elegant gray locks and his trim mustache and beard, which he continued to wear despite his clerical habit. He was a
