[CHAPTER XVII.]
GOOD OLD DON.
Time passed on. In Spain good Queen Isabella died, and two years later the poor, neglected noble-hearted, pious old Admiral, Christopher Columbus, recommending himself to God, and his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, to King Ferdinand's tardy justice and each other's brotherly love, also bade a final farewell to an ungrateful world.
And in Hispaniola also time passed on. Many there grieved over the Admiral when he was dead, who had tormented him in every possible way when living,—that is the way with poor, stupid human nature. But he had one true mourner, who had loved and served him with all his heart during the year that they were together, and whose memory for those he cared for was not a short one. Montoro de Diego, amidst his many new interests, felt a very keen pang of sorrow when the news was brought out to the island, towards the end of the year 1506, of the loss the world had sustained.
"Ah! Señor Las Casas," he sighed one morning, some months later; "ah! then, if he had lived, and the queen, you might then have had hope even yet to work some good for these wretched, rightful owners of these lands. But now—"
"Ay, indeed!" exclaimed Bartholomew Las Casas with heaving chest, as he rose and strode hastily up and down his terrace. "You may well pause upon that but now, Diego. For now one might more wisely waste breath in calling upon wolves and wild cats to cease from fierceness, than in pleading with one's fellow-men for mercy, justice, or compassion. 'Give us yourselves,' is the fierce cry that echoes all around us. 'Give us yourselves, your wives and daughters, for our humble slaves; give us your gold, your lands, all you hold most valuable; resign your wills, your faith, your souls into our keeping, and we will give you leave to live as long as unremitting toil and cruelty will let you. But resist us, fight for your country or your liberty, contradict our lightest caprice, and we will shoot you down as though you were so many rabbits, we will hunt you to death with our dogs as though you were vermin or wild beasts.'"
The young man came to a sudden stop, with a face glowing with generous indignation, and literally panting for breath with his burst of righteous wrath. Montoro's cheeks were flushed with sympathy as he said in quick reply—
"It is so. I can but too terribly vouch for the truth of your bitter accusation. But, Señor, your brethren the priests, can they not—"
Las Casas turned upon him with sharp interruption.
"Can they not help me, you would ask? Ay, verily," with indignant scorn; "well indeed do they help the cause I have at heart! This is one of the proclamations allowed by some of those same brethren the priests—'Your souls are doomed to eternal perdition, your bodies belong to those who have conquered your soil!' Much good my brethren the priests will do!"