The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes

The successive owners of this animal were Seius, Dollabella, Cassius, and Anthony. The first of them was executed, the rest committed suicide.

63

A tax on sales and transfers.

64

A Christian of Moorish descent.

65

A promenade on the banks of the Arlozoro at Valladolid.

66

Piedra preciosa, precious stone.

67

It is hard to say what "exquisite reason" Cervantes can have had for likening a girl's eyes to emeralds above all other gems. He uses the phrase elsewhere, apparently without any ironical meaning.

68

A dish, in which a fowl is served up disjointed.

69

The wife of the teniente, or lieutenant.

70

It was formerly the custom in Spain that a civil officer on giving up his post, should remain for a certain time in the place where he had served, to answer any charges of maladministration that might be brought against him.

71

After the discovery of America the Spanish dollar was marked with the pillars of Hercules and the legend "PLUS ULTRA."

72

Juanico, diminutive of Juan; Johnny.

73

One of the ways in which the torture was formerly administered in Spain, was by making the patient swallow pieces of gauze in water.

74

Gipsy encampment.

75

See note, p. 200.

76

A city of Cyprus, taken from the Venetians by the Turks in 1570.

77

A mistake. The prophet's tomb is in Mecca. Medina was his birthplace.

78

In the year 1596, when the city was taken by Elizabeth's commanders, Admiral Howard and the Earl of Essex.

79

Under whom Cervantes himself was for four years in slavery at Algiers.

80

"Men on town," gente de barrio, literally, people of the ward or quarter.

81

See the romance of Amadis of Gaul.