which he loved still dearer—it was under restrictions ruinous to almost any enterprise. In his ordinary mood he played fairly enough the statesman and hero, but in truth his statesmanship was superficial, and his heroism theatrical. Las Casas calls him a terrible fellow for those who served him, and Gomara says he had little stomach for expenditures. This much allowance, however, should be made in any statements of historians respecting the governor of Cuba: in their drama of the conquest Diego Velazquez plays the part of chief villain to the hero Hernan Cortés, when as a matter of fact Cortés was the greater villain of the two, principally because he was the stronger.
Even the priests praise Cortés, though many of his acts were treacherous; and timidity in a leader was accounted the most heinous of crimes. On the whole, I agree with Torquemada that the governor should have gone against Montezuma in person, if it was necessary he should go on such dastardly work at all; but we may be sure that Velazquez would not himself venture upon this sea of high exploit, though Æolus with a silver cord had tied up the winds in an ox-hide, as he did for Ulysses. And now from this time forth, and indeed from the moment the unrestrainable Estremaduran embarked defying him, the sulphurous fire of hatred and revenge burned constant in the old man’s breast.
Never was villainy so great that if united with high station or ability it could not find supporters; for most men are rascals at heart in one direction or another. The pretty pair, Velazquez the governor, and Cortés the adventurer—so well pitted that the
difference between them consists chiefly in setting off the position of one against the native strength of the other, the manners and pusillanimity of the one against the fate-defying chivalry of the other—had each his active workers not only in Spain, but in America, those of Velazquez being some of them in the very camp of Cortés. Since the royal grant of superior powers to Velazquez, this faction has lifted its head. And now its brain works.