be sent to the Indies and in whose impartiality and humanity he
had placed all his hopes. Both the Dominicans and Franciscans, for once
in accord in this business, addressed letters to the King and the Cardinal
in defence of Las Casas, armed with which he sailed in May, 1517, for
Spain and within fifty days arrived at Aranda de Duero, where he found his
friend and protector, the Cardinal-regent, stricken with a serious
illness.

The arrival in Spain of the young King, Charles I.--better known in history
under his imperial title of Charles V.,--after repeated postponements was
now confidently expected. During his regency, Cardinal Ximenez had been
frequently embarrassed by the influences surrounding the King in his
distant Flemish court. He had written with characteristic frankness
advising the King not to bring a Flemish household with him into Spain,
and as soon as the date for the royal journey was fixed, the Cardinal set
out to meet his arriving sovereign, travelling as fast as his age and
infirmities would allow. He had arrived at Aranda de Duero, where he was
seized with an illness of such a mysterious character that his friends
hinted that he had been poisoned.

In the one interview which Las Casas obtained, he perceived that the
machinations of his enemies had not been entirely in vain, for he found
the Cardinal's mind somewhat influenced by the representations which had
reached him from the Jeronymites and the agents of the colonists.

Charles V. landed at Villaviciosa in Asturias on September 13, 1517.
Among his first acts was the dispatch of a letter to the Cardinal, in
which the latter was dismissed to his diocese with a few perfunctory
expressions of regard and recognition for his services. Cardinal Ximenez
breathed his last a few hours after reading this heartless communication
and Las Casas was left to begin anew his life as a courtier and to
cultivate the good-will of the all-powerful Flemish favourites. He was
fortunate, at this time, in securing the friendship of a brother of Fray
Antonio de Montesinos, named Reginaldo, who was also a Dominican and
proved a staunch and resourceful ally.

[Illustration: Charles V.]

Charles V.

From an engraving by Ferdinand Slema, made in 1778 after the portrait by
Titian

Influences and arguments which sound strange enough in twentieth-century
ears were powerful,