Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/24

4 During his early childhood his health was so frail that he was several times thought to be at death's door. It seemed, therefore, all important to provide him with a powerful patron saint, who was finally chosen by drawing lots among the twelve apostles, the choice thus falling upon St. Peter, to whom Cortes rendered profound devotion during all his life and to whose protection he constantly attributed his victories.

When their son was fourteen years old, his parents sent him to the University of Salamanca to prepare himself for the practice of law, which was held in high esteem and opened a promising career to a young man of ability. During the two years he remained there, he lodged in the house of his paternal aunt, Inez de Paz, who was married to one Francisco Nuñez Valera. This brief course of study was sufficient to prove that he was in no way fitted for the profession his parents had chosen for him, so in 1501 he caused them the liveliest chagrin by returning to Medellin.

An idle year of rather disorderly life followed. The boy's taste was for arms and adventures, and, after hovering between the rival attractions of the Italian campaign under Gonsalvo de Cordoba, and those of service with Don Nicolas de Ovando, the recently appointed Governor of Hispaniola, he finally decided to join the latter, who was preparing to sail, with an important fleet of thirty ships, fitted out at the royal expense, to take possession of his office. In this he was urged, probably, by the consideration that the Governor was a family friend, who might be counted upon to advance his interests. Just before sailing, however, Cortes had the mishap of falling from a wall which he was scaling to keep an appointment with a lady, an accident which might have ended fatally for him but for the intervention of an old woman who, attracted by the noise of his fall at her very door, arrived just in time to