Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/34

14 Reconciliation is overcharged, for the Governor was more than dignified—he was pompous, and something of a martinet in his ideas of discipline, being so tenacious of etiquette that no one, not even the first citizens in the colony sat uninvited in his presence. Nor had he ever stood in relations of equal comradeship to Cortes, however friendly he may have been, hence it is not to be imagined that he humbled himself to offer a reconciliation, being first rebuffed by his subordinate, and afterwards, when it suited the latter to present himself before him, that he celebrated the resumption of friendly relations with such demonstrations of affection and intimacy as Gomara describes. If the Gomara version is the true one, and the quarrel had no other origin than the hot words exchanged concerning Cortes's conduct in a private affair which, strictly speaking, was no concern of the Governor's, Velasquez might easily have forgiven and forgotten, especially as the lady's honour was saved, if but tardily. But if the statement of Las Casas is correct, and the Governor discovered his secretary in the act of plotting with his enemies for his overthrow, then Diego Velasquez must be considered to have been the most fatuous and frivolous of men. Magnanimity might prompt forgiveness of even such treachery, and Velasquez might choose to forget the falsity of a man whose enmity he could afford to ignore or despise, but to afterwards confide the most important venture of his life to such a one was a blunder, than which it would be difficult to imagine a greater. Yet Diego Velasquez's vast capacity for blundering enabled him even to do this.

Gold was the magnet which drew the Spanish adventurers to the New World, and though it had nowhere been found either so easily or so plentifully as they expected, enough had been discovered to whet their appetites for more. They lived in the midst of a world of mysterious possibilities which might any day by a lucky discovery