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Now when the clerico had spoken to Fonseca about this, the reply had been that there was no money in it for the King, so that Las Casas saw that if he was to get the grant, he must find a way to make it profitable to the King and his ministers. No wonder the Indians thought that gold was the white man's god.
The Franciscans had not always been in sympathy with Las Casas, but seem now to have been as anxious as he to have something done to set matters right. Some of them were well known to the Grand Chancellor, and they gave the clerico letters to that official, who was at once interested; and as Las Casas came to see more of him, the two became great friends.
Another circumstance equally unpleasant soon came to her knowledge; and that was: that the man who pretended to be her husband was after all no husband that he did not act to her as a husband should do in short, that the marriage had been a sham the ceremony having been performed by some Mormon brother, in the disguise of a clerico!" "Was the girl's father aware of this deception!"
He was traveling with a party of persons also bound for San Domingo, and one day at noon, as they drew near the city, while they were all resting in the shade of the trees, some people came up with them and told them that the news had reached the city that the Indians of the Pearl Coast had killed the clerico, Bartholomé Las Casas, and all his household.
The clerico was of course very indignant with them, and we may be sure that he never gave them any peace, so that they must have learned to dread the very sight of him.
The heart of the clerico burned within him as he saw so much suffering and misery about him and could not get the three commissioners to put a stop to it. Something, he felt, must be done. The fathers had now been in the islands six months and things were no better than they had been before their coming; so he resolved to go again to Spain and seek a remedy for this state of things.
Afterward Las Casas confessed with sorrow that he had done wrong in this, as it was no more right to hold the negroes in slavery than to so treat the Indians. The Bishop of Burgos, who was, you will remember, always bent on opposing the clerico in everything he undertook, laughed at this plan.
Perhaps you can imagine how the clerico felt when he knew that Ocampo and his soldiers were going to the very country that had been granted to him for his settlement and were to punish the Indians there, where he had hoped to set up a sort of city of refuge for them.
The clerico tells us of a certain Indian chief, who had fled before the Spaniards from Hispaniola to Cuba, and who, hearing that the Christians were coming there also, called his people together and told them that the reason why the Spaniards treated them so cruelly was because they had a god whom they greatly loved and adored, and it was to make them also love and serve him that they killed and enslaved them.
The Dominicans were kept back with him, as he was their vicar-general, but the Franciscans went, and with them Father Luis Cancer, taking with him a copy of the new laws. These laws were a great triumph for Las Casas, and their acceptance was due to his wonderful personal influence. The clerico was now seventy years old. He had crossed the ocean twelve times.
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