Free Cervantes Street by Jaime Manrique Page B

days later, my exhausted horse rode under the arch of the Porta del Popolo. I dismounted and, with tears clouding my vision, I kissed one of the columns that marked the entrance to the city of the Caesars.
    Without delay, I headed for the residence of Cardinal Acquaviva, near Vatican City. I didn’t care that I was dirty and close to collapsing when I came knocking on the door of the cardinal’s grand residence and was brought into his presence. Acquaviva received me with an open smile that dissipated my worst fears.
    “I was afraid Your Excellency would have forgotten me,” I mumbled, as a way of apologizing for my unannounced visit.
    “Of course I remember you, Cervantes,” he said. “I don’t ever forget a promising young poet. How good of you to remember me. Welcome to Rome and to my, and your, house.”
    I kissed the white-gloved hand he offered me. No questions about my precipitous arrival in the city were asked, to my great relief. I was wondering if he had heard anything about the incident in Madrid, when he put me at ease, saying, “I have a pressing need of a secretary who can answer my correspondence in Spanish. How is your calligraphy?”
    “I speak the truth when I say to Your Excellency that my handwriting, though small, is clear, and has been praised by my teachers.” I was flabbergasted by his offer. “And I hope not to embarrass you with my spelling.”
    He motioned to his aide de chamber. “Take Signor Miguel’s bags to the visitor’s apartment on this floor.” Addressing me, Cardinal Acquaviva added, “Cervantes, I can put you to work immediately. In the meantime you’ll have your meals here. How does five florins a month sound to you?”
     
    * * *
     
    Besides his love of poetry, the cardinal was interested in painting, music, philosophy, history, and both local and world politics. He liked stimulating conversation, especially when accompanied by good food and the finest red wines. Talk of religion seemed to bore him, making him distracted and impatient. Even though at that point I had written little and published less, he treated me with the respect due a serious poet.
    Those first months in Rome, I took every free moment I had from my duties to explore the magnificent, immortal city. As a new pilgrim, I vowed to love Rome with tender affection, humble devotion, and an open heart, and soon surrendered to her bewitchment. The streets and sun-filled piazzas on which I walked, bedazzled, had been soaked with the blood of Christian martyrs and were sacrosanct ground to me. The footsteps of Michelangelo still echoed in the parks, avenues, and narrow streets. His frescoes on the ceiling and altar of the Sistine Chapel seemed more the work of a deity than a single artist. Admiring their vastness, their beauty, and their perfection for hours, I began to comprehend what it meant to create a work of art that, like Dante’s Comedy , was a summa of all that could be said about the human spirit.
    There was no part of Rome—no gigantic marble column or broken arch, no ancient tomb, no mysterious alley, no ancient wall, no venerable cemetery, no crumbling church, no fading fresco, no vandalized palace, no penumbrous forest of cypresses, no romantic piazza where lovers met at night—that was not an example of the endless bounty of marvels that God had bequeathed men.
    Memories of my troubled past in Spain receded, as well as nostalgia for the life I had left behind. Visiting Rome’s churches, chapels, shrines, and basilicas, studying the statues and the paintings adorning their walls, the frescoes gracing their ceilings, the intricate gold-work of their altars and domes, I felt a perpetual intoxication.
    Determined to succeed at something at least once in my life, I worked assiduously for the cardinal. My parents had sacrificed themselves to send me to the Estudio de la Villa, and I had failed them. In my letters home, I talked at length about the duties I performed in the house of the great man