"Persiles and Sigismunda," the preface of which is a near presentiment
of his closing labors. He says: "Farewell, gayety; farewell, humor;
farewell, my pleasant friends. I must now die, and I desire nothing
more than to soon see you again happy in another world." His industry
was wonderful. We can but have a grateful feeling towards the Count de
Lemos for adding to his physical comfort for the last few years, and
feel a regret that the Count, who had lingered in Naples, could not have
arrived in time to see him once more when he so ardently desired it. In
a dedication to the Count of his final romance, written only four days
before his death, he very touchingly says: "I could have wished not to
have been obliged to make so close a personal application of the old
verses commencing 'With the foot already in the stirrup,' for with very
little alteration I may truly say that with my foot in the stirrup,
feeling this moment the pains of dissolution, I address this letter to
you. Yesterday I received extreme unction. To-day I have resumed my pen.
Time is short, my pains increase, my hopes diminish, yet I do wish my
life might be prolonged till I could see you again in Spain." His wish
was not to be gratified; the Count, unaware of the near danger of his
friend, only returned to find himself overwhelmed with grief at his
loss.

After sixty-nine years of varied fortunes and many struggles, Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra breathed his last, unsoothed by the hands he had
loved, for even this privilege seems to have been denied to him. At the
near end of his life he had joined the kindly third order of the
Franciscan friars, and the brethren cared for him at the last. His
remarkable clearness of intellect never failed him, and on April 23,
1616, the very day that Shakspeare died at Stratford, Cervantes died at
Madrid. Unlike the great English contemporary, whose undisturbed bones
have lain quietly under peril of his malediction, the bones of the great
Spanish poet were irrevocably lost when the old Convent of the Trinity,
in the Calle del Humilladero, was destroyed. Ungrateful Spain! the spot
had never been marked with a common tombstone.

The old house[2] in the Calle de Francos, where he died, was so
dilapidated that, in 1835, it was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and a
marble bust of Cervantes was placed over the entrance by the sculptor,
Antonio Sola.

The "Madrid Epoca," under the heading of "The Prison of Cervantes,"
calls atte