property had he fulfilled her wishes and settled down to an honorable
mercantile life. But the child, who had learned to draw and to compose
almost before he could write, and who had always paled before the
simplest problem of arithmetic, could not reconcile himself to such a
life. The artist within him rebelled, and at the age of seventeen and
a half, feeling the attraction of the capital strong upon him, he bade
farewell to the friends of his youth and set out to seek for fame and
fortune. It was in the autumn of 1854 that Becquer arrived in Madrid,
"with empty pockets, but with a head full of treasures that were not,
alas, to enrich him." Here he encountered an indifference that he had
not dreamed of; and here he remained in the shadow of oblivion, eking
out a miserable existence of physical as well as mental suffering, in
utter loneliness of spirit, until he was joined in 1856 by one who
came to be his lifelong friend and first biographer--Ramón Rodriguez
Correa, who had come to the capital with the same aims as Becquer, and
whose robust health and jovial temperament appealed singularly to the
sad and ailing dreamer. The new-found friend proved indeed a godsend,
for when, in 1857, Gustavo was suffering from a terrible illness,
Correa, while attending him, chanced to fall upon a writing entitled
_El caudillo de las manos rojas, tradición india_. Charmed by its
originality in form and conception, he urged his friend to publish it.
Becquer acquiesced, and the story was accepted and published by La
_Crónica_. The joy of this first success, and perhaps the material aid
that resulted, must have had a great deal to do with Gustavo's speedy
recovery.

A short time after this he entered with his friend Correa the office
of the _Dirección de Bienes Nacionales_ as copyist, at the munificent
salary of some $150 a year. The employment was decidedly contrary to
his taste, and to amuse his tedium he used often to sketch or read