He  stands  head  covered  before  the  Empress
of  Austria;  he  is  entertained  by  the  viceroy
at  Prague.  He  arranges  satiric  shows  for  car-
nivals, carries  important  despatches  from  one
end  of  Europe  to  the  other,  is  hand  and  glove
with  all  sovereigns,  and  shines  in  every  wag-
gery perpetrated  in  court  or  camp.  In  Flanders
he  steals  from  a  commissary  by  tunnelling
under  his  bed.     In  Poland  he  wins  in  a  drink-


CRUDE  FORMS  OF  THE  PICARESQUE  NOVEL    247

ing-bout  by  means  of  sponges  in  his  boot.  In
the  Tyrol  he  is  pressed  into  the  service  of  a
half-breed  captain.  On  board  an  Italian  felucca
he  taps  a  keg  of  wine,  and  lying  down  beside
it  at  night  pretends  to  be  smoking  when  in
reality  he  is  drinking.  At  a  village  fiesta  in
Spain  he  carries  off  the  prize  for  competitive
verses  to  be  hung  on  the  church  door,  as  no-
body can  understand  what  he  writes,  and  he
is  accounted  a  second  Gongora.  At  Falmouth,
in  England,  he  vends  lemons  and  converses
with  the  inhabitants  in  Latin ;  and  in  Brussels
he  discovers  that  a  mistress  he  had  left  there
has  run  off  with  another  man.  Disconsolate,
and  having  the  example  of  Charles  Fifth  before
him,  he  too  determines  to  abdicate.  In  retiring,
his  San  Yuste  is  Naples,  where  he  goes  to  take
charge  of  a  card  house,  a  gift  from  the  Spanish
king.  He  writes  verses  to  his  mistress  and  an
elegy  upon  the  death  of  the  Empress  Maria.
Then  he  takes  leave  of  his  master,  the  Duke  of
Amalfi,  and  the  courtiers,  composing  a  farewell
poem  to  them  without  the  use  of  the  letter  O.
