Of various remarks which were made respecting my history, which the reader will be pleased to hear.
After I had completed this my history, two licentiates called upon me and begged permission of me to peruse it, in order that they might acquaint themselves better with the history of the conquest of Mexico and of New Spain, and that they might judge for themselves in how far my history differed from the representations which Francisco Lopez de Gomara and doctor Illescas have given of the heroic deeds of the marquis del Valle Oaxaca. As ignorant persons, like myself, always learn something from men of learning, I gave it to them, but under the condition that they should neither add nor take anything away from it; as everything I had related was conformable to truth. When the licentiates had read through the whole of my work, one of them who was a great rhetorician, said he was astonished at the sharpness of my memory, that I should not even have forgotten one single circumstance of the many things that had taken place from my first voyage of discovery under Cordoba down to the present time. With respect to my style of writing, both remarked, that it was plain old Castilian, which was more agreeable at that time than those embellished sentences which are generally affected by historians; and that though my style was plain it was rendered beautiful by the truth which it contained. They were, however, of opinion that I had written too conspicuously about myself, in describing the battles at which I was present, and that I should have left this to others. I ought also, they said, to have quoted other historians to confirm my statements, instead of dryly saying: This I did, This happened to me; for, added they, I was only witnessing for myself. To this I replied, and said as follows: "In certain despatches which Cortes forwarded to the emperor from Mexico in the year 1540, my name and the services I had rendered to the crown were