Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/111

Rh prepared to support them in person, but death intervened to spare him from further disappointments. Narvaez, who then joined Tapia and others in the old charges with supplementary complaints, received no satisfaction, though he was encouraged by the varying course of his rival's fortune to maintain the suit for some time.

The ambitious Fonseca was even more deeply affected than his protégé by the rebuke of Charles, though he had been prepared for it by the check already administered through Adrian, now his pontiff. The presidency of the India Council was an office connected more intimately than any otaer with the growth of the new world colonies. Its possessor, indeed, might readily have obtained immortal renown as father or patron of America by promoting its exploration, settlement, and administration, with the zeal worthy of a bishop, and the judgment resulting from thirty years' management of affairs. Instead of this, ever since the time of Columbus, he had proved an obstacle to advancement through his partisanship and narrow-mindedness. Columbus, Las Casas, Cortés, and other transatlantic lights incurred successively his pronounced hostility, and he condescended to acts wholly unworthy of his cloth, as if jealous of fame that would obscure his position. He never regained the favor by which he had rapidly advanced from a dean of Seville, through several prelacies, to the