Early in Captain from Castile young Pedro de Vargas, the hero, muses that in only one day in his town of Jaen, Spain, he had "befriended a pagan heretic, saved the virtue of a barmaid, and given comfort to a murderer." But in the New World — Mexico — where Pedro and the others all end up, what people once were is of little matter. Indeed, the heretic, actually an Aztec chief, exhibits more Christian virtues than a hypocritical priest of the Inquisition, the barmaid more innate quality than a vain highborn Spanish senorita, and the murderer — he killed when drunk — more loyalty and worth than a Spanish grandee. Virtue, devotion, and trust, the hero learns, are not the exclusive attributes of aristocrats. In the New World egalitarianism flourishes. Riches and honors are the hero's for the asking in Spain at the story's conclusion...