Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/92

72 record of any sort be kept of such an important and interesting event in the annals of the family. The absence, therefore, of any record, or even oral tradition, of such an event seems to be at least a negative proof that it never took place. It is quite thinkable that the custodians of the hospital chapel, where the body lay in 1823, should have invented and circulated the fiction of its transport out of the country to convince the intending desecrators that it had been put beyond their reach; meanwhile it was easy to hide the coffin in some secret place, doubtless within the walls of the hospital itself, where it may still lie in a forgotten grave. The legend of the transport to Italy and the burial in Palermo being thus started and doubtless diligently spread with a purpose, encountered no contradiction, and, with the death of the necessarily few persons who possessed the secret, all knowledge of the facts was lost, while the invention passed from legend into history, and has been commonly accepted and quoted. Señor Garcia Icazbalceta's letter to Mr. Harrisse does, however, state that "some persons insist that they are still in Mexico hidden in some place absolutely unknown," and these persons are doubtless right. Why Señor Alaman should have made any mystery about the matter, even with his friend Icazbalceta, does not seem easy to explain, especially if he knew the body to be in Palermo. If Señor Alaman knew the body was in Mexico, but wished to encourage the belief that it was in Palermo, his reticence with Señor Garcia Icazbalceta is explicable, for it must also be borne in mind that he never positively said he knew it to be in Palermo, — he merely gave it to be understood that he thought so by quoting Dr. Mora, who stated the fact without offering any proofs of its truth. If he wished what he knew was not true to be believed, his regard for truth forbade his going to the length of a positive statement, but he might feel justified for motives which,