in which he lived. In these he himself is described as a man who wrote and transacted business, and it appears that his household then consisted of his wife, the natural daughter Isabel de Saavedra already mentioned, his sister Andrea, now a widow, her daughter Costanza, a mysterious Magdalena de Sotomayor calling herself his sister, for whom his biographers cannot account, and a servant-maid.
From another document it would seem that the women found employment in needlework for persons in attendance on the Court, and the presumption is, therefore, that when the Court was removed once more to Madrid in 1606, Cervantes and his household followed it; but we have no evidence of his being in Madrid before 1609, when he was living in the Calle de la Magdalena, a street running from the Calle de Atocha to the Calle de Toledo.
Meanwhile "Don Quixote" had been growing in favor, and its author's name was now known beyond the Pyrenees. In 1607 an edition was printed at Brussels. Robles, the Madrid publisher, found it necessary to meet the demand by a third edition, the seventh in all, in 1608. The popularity of the book in Italy was such that a Milan bookseller was led to bring out an edition in 1610; and another was called for in Brussels in 1611. It seemed as if the hope in the motto of Juan de la Cuesta's device on his titlepage[1] was at last about to be realized; and it might naturally have been expected that, with such proofs before him that he had hit the taste of the public, Cervantes would have at once set about redeeming his rather vague promise of a second volume.
But, to all appearance, nothing was farther from his thoughts. He had still by him one or two short tales of the same vintage as those he had inserted in "Don Quixote"—"Rinconete y Cortadillo," above mentioned, the "Amante Liberal," a story like that of the "Captive," inspired by his own experiences, and perhaps the "Celoso Estremeño"—and instead of continuing the adventures of Don Quixote, he set to work to write more of these "novelas exemplares," as he afterwards called them, with a view to making a book of them. Possibly the "Ilustre Fregona," and the "Fuerza de la Sangre," were not written quite so late, but internal evidence shows beyond a doubt that the others, the "Gitanilla," the "Española Inglesa," the "Licenciado Vidriero," the "Dos Doncellas," the
- ↑ "Post tenchras spero lucem."V. fac-simile on titlepage.
