The day after I despatched that message, which was the feast of St. John, another messenger arrived while I was witnessing certain bull rights and other games proper for the festivity, bringing me a letter from the said judge, and another from Your Sacred Majesty, from which I learned the purpose of his coming, and that Your Catholic Majesty had been pleased to order an investigation into my administration of the government of this country. In truth, I greatly rejoiced, not only for the immense favours Your Sacred Majesty has done me in desiring to be informed of my services and faults, but also for the graciousness with which Your Highness has been pleased to let me know through your letter Your Royal intentions to reward me. For the one and the other I kiss the Royal Feet of Your Catholic Majesty a hundred thousand times, and may God, our Lord, grant that, after receiving such favours, I may still be able to serve somewhere, and that Your Catholic Majesty may recognise the sincerity of my desire, which recognition alone will be no small reward for me.
In the letter which the Judge Luis Ponce wrote me, I was informed that he was about leaving for this city,
Arrival of
Luis Ponce
de Leon
and, as there are two principal roads by which he might come and he did not state which of them he proposed to follow, I sent serv-
pitable intentions. He over-ate himself at the splendid banquet he did attend at Iztapalapan, being especially intemperate in the matter of iced drinks of various sorts, so that he was seized with chills, fever, and violent vomiting from which he shortly died. Cortes's account of others falling ill, and a sort of epidemic introduced by the newcomers prevailing, is not confirmed by the reports of others present. Cavo says just the contrary, that, though the others at the banquet ate and drank freely of everything, nobody else suffered from it. The report that the commissioner had been poisoned was at once started, and Albornoz, who left for Spain just at that time, carried the tale thither; so that not even the sworn statement of the doctors who attended Ponce de Leon, affirming that he died of a malignant fever sufficed to entirely kill this calumny.
