From this moment Cortes began gradually to fall in his majesty's favour. Some ascribed this to the president of the council of the Indies, cardinal de Siguenza, who had, in a consultation with his majesty, declared himself against conferring the appointment of governor on Cortes. Others ascribed it to the comendador-mayor of Leon and his wife Doña Maria de Mendoza, who felt piqued at the manner in which Cortes had latterly neglected them. However this may have been, I cannot say; but his majesty adhered to his first determination, and refused to grant Cortes his request. The emperor at this time was about to embark at Barcelona for Flanders, being accompanied by a great number of distinguished personages, and the three patrons of Cortes persevered in their endeavours to obtain the appointment in question for him, until at length his majesty forbade the earl of Nassau to speak another word about it, remarking to him at the same time that the marquisate he had conferred upon Cortes produced a larger annual income than he (the earl) obtained from his whole territory of Nassau.
We will now wish his majesty a good voyage, and say a few words respecting Cortes' marriage with Doña Juana de Zunniga. The banquets which took place on this occasion were of the most sumptuous nature, and the presents which Cortes made his bride, as I have been informed by persons who saw them, were so expensive and magnificent, that nothing in Spain had ever before been seen like them. Even the empress Isabella, it is said, expressed a wish, from the descriptions which had been given her of these presents by the jewellers, to possess similar ones, and that she had accepted with indifference several precious stones which Cortes had presented to her, because they were not equal in beauty and value to those he had given to his wife.
Cortes, upon the whole, experienced a great deal of vexation during his stay in Spain. Above all, it is said, the empress changed her previous