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_Flemish School in Prado Gallery, Madrid._ ]
TOLD BY PADRE LUIS COLOMA, S.J. OF THE REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA TRANSLATED BY LADY MORETON
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. MCMXII
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WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
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In one of the addresses delivered at the time of Padre Coloma's admission to the Real Academia Española there is a reference to Jeromín, as this Story of Don John of Austria is called in Spanish, which says that it awakes great interest in the reader by inaugurating a new type of book, half novel and half history. This seems too true a description of it not to be quoted here.
In his preface the author states that he does not propose to delve into any deep problems, or to put forward unknown facts about personages already judged at the bar of history. All the same, I think that much in this book will be fresh to English readers, notably, perhaps, the fact that an "auto da fe" consisted in hearing the sentences pronounced on the prisoners of the Inquisition, not in witnessing their execution, and that in most cases the condemned were garrotted before being burnt.
Many of the illustrations will also be new to most people. Through the kindness of the Duke of Berwick and Alba the two pictures of the "Gran Duque" in his palace at Madrid are reproduced with their history. I am indebted to Colonel Coloma for the picture of Antonio Pérez and the one of Luis Quijada, photographed specially for this book. Señor de Osma was good enough to send me the autograph of Don John's mother, which proves her to have been a woman of at least some education. From him, too, comes a most interesting specimen of Don John's writing—the postscript to the dispatch announcing the battle of Lepanto.