the truth of what he had said, and what bad use
the factor must have made of it, to serve his own ends.

As the factor and veedor were still kept in close confinement, and
Cortes, according to the arrangements made by Leon in his will, could
not at present continue the criminal suits against those two persons,
besides that he had many other unpleasant matters to attend to just
then, he determined to leave the case as it was until his majesty's
further pleasure should be known with regard to the government of New
Spain. The whole of his time was occupied for the present in reclaiming
a great part of his possessions which had been sold to raise a fund that
prayers might be offered up in the churches for his departed soul; but
this was done with an evil design, that people might think he was really
dead. All this property, besides that which had been set apart for the
masses for the repose of his soul, was purchased by an inhabitant of
Mexico named Juan Caceres the wealthy.

Diego de Ordas finding that Cortes, since the arrival of Leon, had lost
his former authority, and that many persons had even the shamelessness
to neglect and make him feel the little estimation in which they held
him, he, with his usual dexterity of mind, profited by this circumstance
to regain the good graces of our general, and advised him to assume all
the outward splendour of a grandee, to receive his visitors seated on a
canopied throne, and not to allow himself to be called merely Cortes,
but to be addressed as Don Hernando Cortes. He at the same time
particularly reminded him that the factor was a creature of the
comendador-mayor Don Francisco de los Cobos, whose influence in Spain
was immense. The protection of such a man, he said, might perhaps be of
the utmost importance to him, as his majesty and the council of the
Indies were much prejudiced against him; it would be altogether
injurious to his interests to act more severely against the factor than
the law permitted. This counsel Ordas thought proper to give Cortes, as
it was generally suspected in Mexico that he intended putting the factor
to death in his prison.

Before I proceed with my narrative I must inform the reader why, when
speaking of Cortes, I never call him Don Hernando Cortes, or marquis, or
by any other title, but plainly Cortes. The reason is, that he himself
was best pleased when he was simply addressed as Cortes; besides that,
he was not created marquis until some time a