usually business there is despatched quite otherwise--it is necessary
that the approval shall come back from Valladolid immediately, or
else the fleet will have departed, or be on the point of going. In the
meantime the religious are in suspense, without knowing whether they
are to make the voyage or no; for in the House of Trade at Sevilla they
either refuse to give them the grant necessary for their support until
the approval of the Council arrives, or, if they grant it in advance,
they require a bond which the poor commissary does not know where to
find--and which even if he could find it would be unwise for him to
give, since he has no means by which to satisfy it in case the Council
decree some other thing than what he expects. If, on the other hand,
the House of Trade allows the grant after the appropriation arrives,
the time is so short that it is impossible to provide the supplies for
the voyage, except very poorly and in great haste, and at a very high
price, since one must purchase without time for examination. Besides
this, the religious are greatly hurt to find themselves subjected to
an examination at the hands of the Council with regard to their life,
their habits, and their family, just as if to permit them to go to the
Indias were as much as to appoint them to bishoprics; this has greatly
cooled their ardor. If the commissary who conducts them is not a man
of great prudence, so that he can gild and smooth over this annoyance,
it is certain that not one of them will go farther. Much more is it
true that, if the rule should become known in the provinces of Castilla
and Aragon, whence the religious for these missions usually go, no one
would enter them; for if a man is required to leave his own country
and his relatives and friends, and exile himself to the end of the
world, at the risk of being excluded from the missions by the Council
of the Indias, that would be the same as to put on him an eternal
_sanbenito_ [11] in his order. Indeed, who would voluntarily subject
himself to an interrogation of this sort? May it please God that,