WHEREIN THE CAPTIVE RELATES HIS LIFE AND ADVENTURES
My family had its origin in a village in the mountains
of Leon, and nature had been kinder and more generous
to it than fortune; though in the general poverty
of those communities my father passed for being even
a rich man; and he would have been so in reality had
he been as clever in preserving his property as he
was in spending it. This tendency of his to be
liberal and profuse he had acquired from having been
a soldier in his youth, for the soldier’s life
is a school in which the niggard becomes free-handed
and the free-handed prodigal; and if any soldiers are
to be found who are misers, they are monsters of rare
occurrence. My father went beyond liberality
and bordered on prodigality, a disposition by no means
advantageous to a married man who has children to succeed
to his name and position. My father had three,
all sons, and all of sufficient age to make choice
of a profession. Finding, then, that he was unable
to resist his propensity, he resolved to divest himself
of the instrument and cause of his prodigality and
lavishness, to divest himself of wealth, without which
Alexander himself would have seemed parsimonious; and
so calling us all three aside one day into a room,
he addressed us in words somewhat to the following
effect:
“My sons, to assure you that I love you, no
more need be known or said than that you are my sons;
and to encourage a suspicion that I do not love you,
no more is needed than the knowledge that I have no
self-control as far as preservation of your patrimony
is concerned; therefore, that you may for the future
feel sure that I love you like a father, and have
no wish to ruin you like a stepfather, I propose to
do with you what I have for some time back meditated,
and after mature deliberation decided upon. You
are now of an age to choose your line of life or at
least make choice of a calling that will bring you
honour and profit when you are older; and what I have
resolved to do is to divide my property into four
parts; three I will give to you, to each his portion
without making any difference, and the other I will
retain to live upon and support myself for whatever
remainder of life Heaven may be pleased to grant me.
But I wish each of you on taking possession of the
share that falls to him to follow one of the paths
I shall indicate. In this Spain of ours there
is a proverb, to my mind very true—as they
all are, being short aphorisms drawn from long practical
experience—and the one I refer to says,
‘The church, or the sea, or the king’s
house;’ as much as to say, in plainer language,
whoever wants to flourish and become rich, let him
follow the church, or go to sea, adopting commerce
as his calling, or go into the king’s service
in his household, for they say, ‘Better a king’s
crumb than a lord’s favour.’ I say
so because it is my will and pleasure that one of
