sly with the departure of Las Casas another and very
different mission was dispatched to the same goal. This was one
consisting of Narvaez and Antonio Velasquez--not the Governor, Diego
Velasquez--bearing a petition to the King to the effect that the
repartimiento system should be transformed into one of absolute and
perpetual slavery; so that the land-owners might hold their Indians
permanently, and bequeath them to their heirs like any other property.
That this was sent simultaneously with Las Casas's going is not to be
regarded as a coincidence, however. It is altogether probable that the
action was inspired by knowledge of the purpose of Las Casas and by a
determination to forestall him or to defeat him.

How Ferdinand would have decided between the two, whether the
impassioned eloquence of Las Casas or the gold which Narvaez and Antonio
Velasquez bore with their petition, would have been the more potent,
must ever remain matter of uncertainty; for he was never called upon to
make the decision. Before the issue could be put to him, on January 23,
1516, he died. In the interregnum, before the arrival of the new King,
Charles I, from Flanders, Cardinal Ximenes was Regent, and it was to him
that Las Casas addressed himself; after he had first been scornfully
received and his mission ridiculed by Bishop Fonseca, of Burgos. The
great Cardinal had long been an advocate of humane treatment of the
Indians, and was quite ready to listen to Las Casas, calling into
council for the purpose several other prelates and statesmen. Early in
the hearings, in order to make sure of his ground, Ximenes bade the
clerk to read the full text of the laws relating to the Indians, and
that functionary, being a partisan of the advocates of slavery,
purposely misread one important clause. Las Casas cried out, "That is
not the law!" Ximenes bade the clerk to read it again. He did so, with
the same perversion; and again Las Casas exclaimed, "The law says no
such thing!" Annoyed, Ximenes rebuked Las Casas and threatened him with
a penalty if he interrupted again. "Your Lordship is welcome to send my
head to the block," retorted the undaunted Las Casas, "if what the clerk
has read is in the law!" Other members of the Council thereupon snatched
the laws from the clerk's hand, and found that Las Casas was right,
whereupon the clerk wished that he had never been born, while Las Casas,
as he himself modestly records, "lost nothing of the regard which th