I should be honoured. Now he must be entreated that it may please
him to occupy himself in remedying my many grievances and in
ordering that the agreement and letters of concession which their
Highnesses gave me be fulfilled, and that I be indemnified for so
many damages. And he may be certain that if their Highnesses do
this, their estate and greatness will be multiplied to them in an
incredible degree. And it must not appear to him that forty
thousand pesos in gold is more than a representation of it; because
they might have had a much greater quantity if Satan had not
hindered it by impeding my design; for, when I was taken away from
the Indies, I was prepared to give them a sum of gold incomparable
to forty thousand pesos. I make oath, and this may be for thee
alone, that the damage to me in the matter of the concessions their
Highnesses have made to me, amounts to ten millions each year, and
never can be made good. You see what will be, or is, the injury to
their Highnesses in what belongs to them, and they do not perceive
it. I write at their disposal and will strive to start yonder. My
arrival and the rest is in the hands of our Lord. His mercy is
infinite. What is done and is to be done, St. Augustine says is
already done before the creation of the world. I write also to
these other Lords named in the letter of Diego Mendez. Commend me
to their mercy and tell them of my going as I have said above. For
certainly I feel great fear, as the cold is so inimical to this, my
infirmity, that I may have to remain on the road.

"I was very much pleased to hear the contents of your letter and
what the King our Lord said, for which you kissed his royal hands.
It is certain that I have served their Highnesses with as much
diligence and love as though it had been to gain Paradise, and more,
and if I have been at fault in anything it has been because it was