SUSPENSE AND DISAPPOINTMENT. 



149* 



and aided in his schemes, Columbus departed for Cordova. Here- 

 he was destined to undergo another disappointment; for the- 

 queen's confessor, his expected patron, treated him as a dream- 

 ing speculator and needy adventurer. He soon became again- 

 isolated and forgotten. In the midst of his indigence, however,, 

 a noble lady, Beatrix Enriquez, young and beautiful, though 

 not rich, noticed his manners and his language, so evidently above 

 his condition, and detained him at Cordova long after his hopes 

 were extinguished. He married her: she bore him a son, Fer- 

 nando, who afterwards became his father's biographer and his- 

 torian. 



Columbus now wrote to the king a brief and concise letter,, 

 setting forth his desires. It was never answered. After a mul- 

 titude of similar deceptions and disappointments, Geraldini, the 

 ambassador of the Pope, presented him to Mendoza, the Grand 

 Cardinal, through whose influence Columbus obtained an audience 1 

 of Ferdinand, who appointed a junto of wise men to examine 

 and report upon his scheme. This junto, made up of theologians 

 and not of navigators and geographers, and which sat at Sala- 

 manca, opposed Columbus on biblical grounds, declared the 

 theory a dangerous if not heretical innovation, and finally re- 

 ported unfavorably. This decision was quite in harmony with 

 public opinion in Salamanca, where Columbus was spoken of as 

 "a foreigner who asserted that the world was round like an. 

 orange, and that there were places where the people walked on: 

 their heads." Seven years were thus wasted in solicitation, sus- 

 pense, and disappointment. From time to time Columbus had 

 reason to hope that his proposals would be reconsidered ; but in 

 •1490 the siege of Baza, the last stronghold of the Moors, and in 

 1491 the marriage of Isabella, the daughter of Ferdinand and 

 Isabella, with Don Alonzo of Portugal, absorbed the attention 

 of their majesties to the exclusion of all scientific pre- occupations. 

 Finally, when the matter was reopened, and the junto was re- 

 assembled, its president, Fernando de Talavera, was instructed 



