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He had spent also every cent of money he possessed, and endured every kind of opposition and abuse; but at last the papers were signed. The grant was now assured, though not so much land had been given as had been asked. A company of laborers was ready to go out with the clerico, and money had been loaned him for the expenses of the undertaking.
At first my young friend, Giuseppe Loverdi, gave me information; but on the third day I gave information to him, and re-wrote history as usual, and told him all about the supreme King and his Court of Poets, and the terrible book that he never wrote. His reason for entering the church was singularly mediaeval. I asked him why he thought of becoming a clerico, and how.
The monks were not men of the determined character necessary for such an act, nor were they endowed with the courage to face the storm it would have brought about their ears. Few men are like the clerico, who was afraid of nobody. Just after Las Casas reached the Indies a man named Juan Bono, a shipmaster, arrived there with a shipload of Indians, whom he had kidnaped in the island of Trinidad.
The Cardinal, provoked by so many interruptions, rebuked him, when he exclaimed: "Your lordship may order my head to be cut off if what the clerk reads is what the law says." And snatching the book from the clerk, he proved that he was right. We cannot help thinking that if the clerk had known "the clerico," as he usually calls himself, a little better, he would not have dared to try such a trick.
One of them, a young lawyer, when he heard of rents to be paid to the King and of honors to be given to the Knights of the Golden Spur, said that this "scandalized" him, for it showed a desire for temporal things, which he had never suspected in the clerico.
This was the return Bono and his men made to the innocent, gentle Indians, who had been so kind to them. No wonder the heart of the clerico was on fire with indignation when he heard the story. He went at once to the three fathers and told them the dreadful tale. They listened, but did nothing, as usual.
It seemed to him that there was nothing to be done but to go to San Domingo at once and get the officers to recall Ocampo. So he distributed his laborers by twos and threes among the citizens of Porto Rico, and hurried away. Nobody in San Domingo was glad to see the clerico except his friends the Dominicans.
He himself told the clerico how it was done. He had gone to the island with sixty men and told the Indians that they had come to live with them. The Indians received them kindly, brought them food, and, as Bono said himself, treated them like brothers. Bono told them that the white men would like a large house to live in, and the Indians at once went to work to build it for them.
At this council it was decided to send Las Casas to Spain to plead for more Dominicans and Franciscans to come out. He took with him Father Ladrada and Father Luis Cancer, whose Indian converts were greatly grieved to part with them; but the clerico comforted them with the promise of a speedy return.
The Grand Chancellor thought very well of this plan, and told the clerico to lay it before the Council of the Indies. Of course their bishop, Fonseca, was against it. The plan was not absolutely prohibited, however, but they delayed doing anything about it, until the clerico was nearly driven wild with anxiety and disappointment.
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