Your Most Lofty Majesty has earlier bidden your chaplain to secure "writings, tablets, or other records" to substantiate the tales told in these page… - Gary Jennings

To command respect and deference and privileges reserved for the nobility, I need only dare to be a noble.

Surely my life awaits, whichever way I go from here, and whether I go alone or not.
The cacao man smiled too, but ironically. "Yes, at your age, many possible lives await. Go whichever way you choose. Go alone or in company. The companions may walk with you a long way or a little. But at the end of your life, no matter how crowded were its roads and its days, you will have learned what all must learn. And that will be too late for any starting over, too late for anything but regret. So learn it now. No man has ever yet lived out any life but one, and that one his chosen own, and most of that alone."

That we may be better acquainted with our colony of New Spain, of its peculiarities, its riches, the people who possessed it, and the beliefs, rites, and ceremonies which they heretofore held, we wish to be informed of all matters appertaining to the Indians during their existence in that land before the coming of our liberating forces, ambassadors, evangels, and colonizers.