Miguel de Mendoza

“ On the following morning, as soon as he was dressed, and after spending by his wife's side a much shorter time than circumstances required, he left the house and hastened to Mendoza's.
Mendoza at this time was lodging at one of the best and most central hotels of Madrid. When Miguel reached there, he was still asleep. Nevertheless, he went to his room, and took it upon himself to open the shutters like a friend whose familiarity was limitless.
"Holá! I see that you sleep just the same as when you were not a great man." ”

“ Although Miguel did not care much for politics, he worked diligently on the paper. The revolutionary atmosphere had sufficiently condensed itself, and no young man could escape its feverish and disturbing influence.
The Conde de Ríos was at last banished to the Balearic Islands. Mendoza suddenly disappeared from Madrid, leaving a letter to his friend Miguel, telling him that he had made his escape because he had been informed that the police were going to arrest him, and asking him to take charge of the paper. ”

“ After breakfast they betook themselves to Congress, not, however, without the Amphitryon first hurrying up to his room, and bringing down a package of documents, which proved to be notes for his speech.
"María Santísima!" cried Miguel. "How calm and undisturbed are the poor deputies who at this moment are without a thought of the coming earthquake!"
They arrived in altogether too good season. There were but few people in the salón and the lobbies. Mendoza went to join a group of personages, grave and solemn like himself, and began to talk with them. ”

“ To begin with, suppose you ask pardon of Senor Don Miguel de Mendoza for the affront you have put upon him.”
To a soul really fearless, even an apology has no terrors. Moreover, Freeman’s night ride with Don Miguel, though brief in time, had sufficed to give him the measure of the Mexican’s character; and he respected it so little that he could no longer take the man seriously, or be sincerely angry with him. The professor’s assurance as to Don Miguel’s inoffensiveness had also its weight ”

“ I have excused many things in my life, Perico; but this goes beyond bounds."
Rivera, in saying these words, trembled with indignation.
"Don't be so explosive man! why, I have not yet refused to go with you to the Presidency, or anywhere else," said Mendoza, laying his hand on his shoulder, while his lips were curved by that humble smile which Miguel compared to that of "a Newfoundland dog." "Come on! let us go this very moment to the Presidency!" ”

“ At last Mendoza, without lifting his eyes from the floor, and evidently disturbed, began to speak:—
"I believe that if you were willing, the matter might be arranged without asking money of any one.... Eguiburu will be satisfied if only your name is endorsed, and he will furnish all that is necessary each month...."
Miguel looked at him keenly, while the other stood still with downcast eyes; then he said, with a laugh:—
"You are indeed a man of happy ideas! If you die before I do, I shall be able to take your skull, and say more complimentary things than Hamlet said about Yorick's." ”

“ If they catch you now, I am inclined to think that you won't get off without being shot."
"Do you think so?" asked Brutandor, growing frightfully pale.
"I do, indeed.... But don't be alarmed; they won't think of coming here after you."
"See here, I beg of you, keep the servants from knowing anything about it, because you see some little word might get out through them ... and I should be lost!"
"It is rather a hard matter to deceive them," replied Miguel, laughing at the tone in which his friend spoke those last words.
Mendoza took up his abode in the house ”

“ The joking continued among the reporters; the observations, however, were made more with the purpose of causing a laugh than of hurting the feelings of the orator, whom almost all knew or were intimate with. Only one, the editor of a Carlist daily, from time to time got off serious criticisms in bad taste, as though he had some personal ill-will against Mendoza. Miguel had already looked at this man two or three times in an aggressive manner, without the other taking any notice of it. ”

“ Both brothers founded families. The Cervatos branch flourished for a considerable time, and held many high offices in Toledo, but, according to Salazar de Mendoza, it had become extinct and its possessions had passed into other families in 1618. The Cervantes branch had more tenacity; it sent offshoots in various directions, Andalusia, Estremadura, Galicia, and Portugal, and produced a goodly line of men distinguished in the service of Church and State. ”

“ The viceroy with great care and diligence did performe the kinges commandement. This fleete and armie being prepared readie (which was not without great cost) , hee caused them to depart out of the port at Christmas time in the yeare of 1564; and sent, for general of the same fleet and for gouernour of that countrie which they should discouer, the worthie Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, who afterwarde died in the said Ilande with the title of Adelantado, a yeare after that the fathers Fryer Martin de Herrada and Fryer Geronimo Marin and their companies did enter into China. ”

“ He rose rapidly into favour under Philip IV., who appointed him private secretary, commissioned from him comedias palaciegas for the royal theatre at Aranjuez, and in 1623 conferred on him the orders of Santiago and Calatrava. Most of his contemporaries and rivals paid court to “el discreto de palacio,” and Mendoza seems to have lived on the friendliest terms with all his brother-dramatists except Ruiz de Alarcón. ”

“ The campaign of Mendoza, which ended in the horrible tragedy of Pilar, brought on by the bad faith of Aldao, was to him the poetry, the idealization, the realization of his readings. He was only eighteen, a beardless youth, unknown to the world, but he lived in an ecstasy of enthusiasm, ready at any moment to be a hero, to sacrifice himself, or to die, in order to obtain the smallest result in the cause for which he fought,—which was liberty to all as well as to himself. ”

“ The most copious notice with which I am acquainted, of the life of Mendoza, is that attributed to the pen of Iñigo Lopez de Avila, and prefixed to the Valencian edition of the "Guerra de Granada," published in 1776. But his countrymen have been ever ready to do honour to the memory of one who, by the brilliant success which he achieved as a statesman, a diplomatist, a novelist, a poet, and an historian, has established a reputation for versatility of genius second to none in the literature of Spain. ”

“ Of the large number of viceroys sent out by the Kings of Spain to govern their new kingdom across the sea none was better fitted for the position than the first one, Mendoza. His many estimable qualities won upon people of all classes, and he paved the way for the future government of his successors by uniting the many apparently incongruous and inharmonious elements of society. ”

“ Mendoza, by nature firm, amiable, and just, seems nevertheless to have been a person who knew when it was necessary in a new country, to bend before the storm of popular opinion in order to avoid the destruction, not only of his own influence, but perhaps of society, civilization and the Spanish authorities themselves. ”

“ The traveler who takes the seven-hundred-mile journey westward through the Camp, luxuriously housed in the coaches of the Great Western Railroad, comes upon a different scene and a different life when he reaches the ancient city of Mendoza in the foothills of the Andes. Here it was that San Martín recruited and organized his Army of Liberation, the army with which, emerging suddenly from its isolated hiding place, he startled the world by his crossing of the Andes to fall upon the unsuspecting Spanish. Mendoza is now the center of the wine and fruit industry. ”

“ One of his sayings was to the effect that—"An enemy who surrenders is a friend whom we ought to protect; it is a greater thing to give life than to destroy it." Sentiments of this kind were doubly commendable when, judging from their rarity, they could scarcely have been popular.
Notwithstanding his good intentions towards the Araucanians, Mendoza soon found himself involved in a struggle to the death with the now hereditary foes of his race, for the southern Indians—maintaining their reputation—proved themselves implacable, and would hear nothing of compromise. ”

“ To say that Mendoza succeeded were too much, but he did not altogether fail; and, despite his occasional Latinised construction, his Guerra de Granada lives not solely as a brilliant and picturesque transcription. It is also a masterly example of idiomatic [210] Castilian prose, published without the writer's last touches, and, as is plain, from mutilated copies. [15] Mendoza may not be a great historian: as a literary artist he is extremely great. ”

“ I wish I had been in that postilion's place myself; then there would have been a different story to tell."
"A horse can display but the swiftness his limbs possess," rebutted Mendoza.
"Riding is not what I knew in my youth," commented Hernandez, who was giving ample appreciation to the pleasures of the table.
"Captain Morando, were you not at a ball given in Madrid last year by the officers of General Guerrero's division in their quarters?" said Señora Valentino. ”

“ MENDOZA, DIEGO HURTADO DE (1503–1575) , Spanish novelist, poet, diplomatist and historian, a younger son of the count of Tendillas, governor of Granada, was born in that city in 1503. The celebrated marquis of Santillana was his great-grandfather. On leaving the university of Salamanca, Mendoza abandoned his intention of taking orders, served under Charles V. in Italy, and attended lectures at the universities of Bologna, Padua and Rome. ”

“ Scoff on, my lord, while yet thou hast the breath. Short-sighted fool! He thinks, because I rave not, clenching my hands or smiting my hot brow, that the barb does not rankle. True revenge is patient as the watchful alchymist, sagacious as the blood-hound on the scent, secret as death! ( Enter Mendoza. )
Mendoza? From the palace? Mendoza
Ay, from the palace; where dispute runs high upon De Lerma's counsel to the king, touching the Pope's new mandate. Hernando
Am I right? De Lerma spurn'd the mandate? Mendoza
And Gonzalez, 'Tis said, is for submission to the Pope. ”

“ It is, however, very certain that Mendoza was not only a brave soldier, but a man of very considerable capacity in civil affairs, although his inordinate arrogance interfered most seriously with his skill as a negotiator. He was, of course, watching with much fierceness the progress of these underhand proceedings between the French court and the rebellious subjects of his master, and using threats and expostulations in great profusion. "Mucio," too, the great stipendiary of Philip, was becoming daily more dangerous, and the adherents of the League were multiplying with great celerity. ”

“ Now Carreras, under the guise of politics and liberalism, was a scoundrel of the deepest dye, and the unhappy state of Mendoza was the prey of thieves, robbers, traitors, and murderers, who formed his party. He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or conscience. He aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose better. ”

“ It cannot be said that he is at his best in these pseudo-classical performances, and he dares to eke out his hendecasyllabics by using a final palabra aguda; but the extreme brilliancy of the humour carries off all technical defects in the burlesque section of his poems, which are of the loosest gaiety, most curious in a retired proconsul. Yet, if Mendoza, who excelled in the old, felt compelled to pen his forty odd sonnets in the new style, how strong must have been its charm! ”

“ If Kings wish to deceive, they begin by deceiving us the first!” So writes the renowned Mendoza to his brother-diplomatist, Zuñiga. Mendoza, one of the most illustrious of the political, military, and literary worthies of Old Spain, was Ambassador for Charles V. to Rome, and is still more celebrated as the author of Lazarillo de Tormes. ”

“ The poncho thrown carelessly over his shoulders, his mustachios and imperial made him look the Old World soldier leader.
"My messenger evidently caught you before you broke camp." Mendoza spoke in English, as had the other.
"By my faith! he burst into camp on that sorrel like a meteor. I had 'Adelante!' half out of my mouth when he spurred on us. A dozen pistols were aimed at him, and why my fellows didn't shoot I don't see, except that they were afraid of hitting the horse. A native more or less wouldn't count, but these scoundrels know rare horseflesh night or day. ”

“ The halts at Teneriffe and at Rio de Janeiro had resulted in some dissensions among Mendoza's men, and the execution by the orders of the Chief of one of his most popular leaders had all but caused open mutiny at the latter place. Nevertheless, when his forces landed at the site of the present town of Buenos Aires, they constituted a formidable company of men, admirably equipped with everything that the science of the age could devise for the purpose of conquest and colonization, particularly the former. ”