of his task anew by offering it to other monarchs, and of reliving his past by quitting Spain as he had beforetime quitted Portugal. He determined therefore to appeal to the French court, finding encouragement in his bitter affliction by discerning there some ray of salvation and some dawn of success. In this dejected state, he went to Cordova to take farewell of Doña Beatrice, and to kiss Ferdinand, the offspring of his love for her. From Cordova he seems to have gone to Seville to confer with such friends as the Geraldinis, and to make his sorrows known to them, so that they in turn might inform Mendoza; from Seville to Marchena to tell his old protector, the wise monk Antonio, the sad tale of his faded hopes and the illsuccess of all his aspirations; from Marchena to Huelva in search of his brother-in-law Muliarte and his son Diego, the latter left under the care of his uncle while Columbus was leading his anxious and restless life of endeavor; from Huelva, with the wandering impulse of a stricken man, under the terrible hypnotism of monomania, and suffering from nervous attacks like those that herald dementia or death to the madman or suicide, he went in search of some isolated and solitary convent, whither and, ah! for the discovery of worlds which, compared with the Infinite, are but as atoms; penitents and recluses about him that to his soul seem but as shadows-in all these is found an explanation of the refuge sought by Columbus at La Rabida. The old traditions assign his sojourn at the convent to the hour of his arrival and of his high hopes; contemporaneous criticism, better informed, fixes it at the period of his departure and his disenchantment. And herein is the chiefest glory of that spot, that it was the scene of the new birth of a lost hope. And this hope returned because Columbus was devout, and was beloved of those devout men. It was a sacred rock of faith, whereon sprang the purest of all affectionsthe affection of inexhaustible admiration mingled with unquenchable friendship. Let hatred and envy know that the humble Franciscan monk, Juan Perez, in truth discovered the New World, through his deep friendship and admiration for Columbus. Juan Perez, astounded at the dual flow of religious and scientific ideas from Columbus, would recall the many things he had heard, from the pilots who swarmed thereabouts, of the vast ocean and its distant shores. But none VIEW OF LA RABIDA, SHOWING THE GATE AT WHICH COLUMBUS HALTED FOR ALMS. he could flee, as to the shadows of the tomb, and in eternal silence find relief from the sorrows of his overladen heart. When he turned away from the Vega, where every passer-by pauses to look upon the Vermilion Towers, and from that city where none remembered him or his great project, the convent of La Rabida must have seemed to him like a beacon-light in the black night of shipwreck. A little inclosure, pine-shadowed, in the solitude; the measureless western ocean before his eyes; a cloudless heaven toward which to turn a clouded sight; a pavement of sepulchral stones; cloisters wherein to meditate and prepare for the end; sanctified altars to which to cling in hope of pardon and of an eternity too long unthought of amid thirstings for earthly glories, less substantial than a vapor-wreath, among them went further than the astrologer and cosmographer, Garci-Fernandez, who, led on by the padre and charmed by the words of Columbus, was ready to avouch the probability of reaching the oriental Indies by sailing across the western sea. It is ascertained that they sent a certain gentleman named Sebastian Rodriguez, an inhabitant of Lepe, to the camp at Santa Fé, with letters from Juan Perez to the queen; that Rodriguez returned a fortnight later with a positive and urgent command for the monk to present himself at the court; that he, being not only enthusiastic but active too, borrowed a serviceable saddle-mule from a farmer named Cabezudo, and set out, by crosscuts and byways, at the risk of his life and liberty, for the royal seat at Granada; that the father-superior saw the queen, receiving from anything whatever until after she had taken Granada. So intimately is the triumph of our Cross in that famous siege linked with the discovery of America in the ocean-wilds, that the succeeding scenes of our narrative could not well be described without likewise relating that surpassing episode. Juan Perez, although the need of his return to La Rabida was urgent, did not go back, on account of his enthusiasm for the discoverer and the discovery, until after he had earnestly commended the business to the queen, and had seen her old zeal reawakened in favor of the new project and its great originator. There was a marked difference between the visit of Columbus after his return from the court of Lisbon, and his arrival at this supreme abdil, with his brilliant following, surrendered himself to the king Don Ferdinand. A legion of pages, with gold-embroidered garments, went before the king on foot, opening the way for his triumphal procession to the high scene of his glorious conquest. The most exalted ricoshombres of Castile and Aragon, mounted on gaily trapped palfreys and clad in robes of state, surrounded the monarch, with such display of blazonry and insignia, such splendid apparel, such varied standards, such gorgeously attired mace-bearers, that they seemed themselves to be an army of kings. Ferdinand II. had donned his royal robes, and his crimson mantle lined with ermine almost concealed his horse, while the countless crowns of his house and line were seen in miniature, glittering with jewels, attached to his splendid, plume-bedecked cap. Boabdil, on the contrary, was clad in black, as befitting his dignity and his situation, wearing a casque of gold-incrusted steel adorned with mottos appropriate to his rank, his body covered with those famous oriental amulets whose efficacy he himself had never known, but in whose potency the wretched man trusted even in the midst of his irreparable misfortunes. He attempted to dismount when he came to Ferdinand, and even removed his feet from the stirrups in order to alight and kneel before him who had broken and humbled him, but an imperious gesture of the Christian monarch stayed his purpose. Whereupon, deeply moved by such signs of kindness and benevolence, the Rey Chico, the "Little King," begged earnestly to kiss the royal hand, but Ferdinand replied that such homage was proper from a vassal to his lord, never between equals. Then Boabdil, reining his horse by the side of the Aragonese king, eagerly bent forward and imprinted an ardent kiss upon the latter's right arm. Having fulfilled this act of courtesy, which he deemed to be imposed by defeat upon the vanquished, he quickly put his hands to his girdle, and his tawny visage flushed as they touched the thing they sought, the two great keys of the magic city, keys that opened the twin portals of that paradise whence Mohammedan genius and Mohammedan culture had shot forth their last rays of dying splendor. In relinquishing those keys, Boabdil believed perforce that he gave up, with them, the mosques of his God, the tombs of his fathers, the honor of his race; and he cursed the evil hour wherein he had been begotten of Hacem, and the evil star that frowned from the heavens upon his birth, predestining him to behold the downfall beneath his hands of the miraculous work of Musa and of Tarik, the remnant of the empire set up by the Abderramans and the Almansors over all Spain, to the amazement and dismay of all the world. The Arab santon, clad in a white woolen robe whose folds enwrapped him like some funeral statue, with flowing sleeves sweeping the ground, and upon his head the swathing linen turban like the tiara of clouds that wreathes the mountain's brow, sought not to explain the cause of their ruin, but exclaimed, "God alone knoweth!" In his turn the warrior, still wearing his coat of mail, with shield on arm, quivering lance in rest, and scimitar at his side, made token of submission by laying his accoutrements aside, pronouncing the fatalistic phrase, "God doeth all things!" And Boabdil, who embodied the might of his state, the will of his people, and the power of that nation so illustrious and so great in other times, on VOL. XLIV.-48. beholding the towers of the palace of his fathers fading from his sight, and the crown of Alhamar, that in the Eden-fields of Granada had resisted for three hundred years the victories of the Christians, falling from his brow, instead of revolting proudly against his lot and striving with determination to the last, exclaimed, "God willeth it!" The keys having been given up, Boabdil asked for the knight who, under the noble authority of the sovereigns, was to rule over Granada; and when told that the celebrated Count of Tendilla, Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, had been chosen, he turned to him, and, taking from his own finger a golden ring set with a precious jewel, he addressed him in these historical words: "With this signet has Granada been governed. Take it, that you may rule the land; and may Allah prosper your power more than he hath prospered mine." ElZogoibi, "The Unlucky," continued on his path of sorrows, and after having thus met Cardinal Mendoza at the gate of the Siete Suelos, or the seven-story tower, and King Ferdinand on the heights of San Sebastian, he met the Catholic queen at Armilla, upon the Vega, on the road to the royal seat of Santa Fé. Isabella, like Ferdinand, was clad in festal robes, and was seated upon her horse as on a throne. Upon her brow glittered that glorious crown that so soon was to rule two worlds. Her son, the infante Don John, in garments of oriental richness sparkling with gems, rode on a spirited charger by her right hand, while on her left were the princesses, gaily and richly adorned in robes of mingled Florentine brocades and gauzy Moorish tissues. A crowd of noble ladies and of pages of exalted birth formed her court, and added, if it were possible, to its splendor. Inspired by feelings of natural delicacy, the sovereigns had planned that upon that spot the sorrows of the vanquished were to be compensated by an act which would carry joy to his heart. The first-born of the Moorish king, who since the compact of Cordova had remained a hostage in the power of his enemies, was there set at liberty and restored by Isabella to his father. Hitherto Boabdil had shed no tear, but now, on beholding again the son of Moraima his beloved, he pressed his face against the face of the poor child and wept passionately of the abundance of his heart. Thereupon the governor of Cazorla, to whose custody the Christian monarch had committed the Rey Chico, invited him to go on as far as Santa Fé, where, in accordance with the royal orders, he was lodged with the greatest courtesy and pomp in the pavilion of Cardinal Mendoza, as had been agreed. The day wore on, and the silver crucifix, borne in the hands of Mendoza to crown and complete the story of seven centuries, was not yet displayed upon the heights and bastions of the Moorish palace. Isabella, who impatiently looked for its appearance, had found distraction from her thoughts in awaiting the coming of Boabdil and in her meeting with him. But when the Moorish king passed on, and nothing remained to occupy and divert her mind, she again began to glance eagerly at the towers and to be apprehensive lest in that supreme moment some untoward mishap might have befallen the noble cardinal. The Moors, who had thronged about in the early morning, filled with curiosity and with the desire to see the marshaled hosts of the Christians and their gleaming armor,withdrew to their dwellings as to the silence of the tomb when the emblazoned Cross entered beneath those wondrous oriental archways. Granada seemed to be a deserted city in the forenoon of that miraculous and memorable day of deliverance. The hours passed, and the Cross shone not upon the Vermilion Towers, bathed in the rays of the sun that majestically rose to the zenith. Isabella, in her impatience, began to fear that the terms of the capitulation had been violated, and that the cardinal had perchance become the victim of some ambuscade. But at high noon, upon the great watch-tower called La Vela, the emblem of the Cross appeared in all its glory, shining like a day-star in rivalry with the dazzling sun; and when they beheld it gleaming there, upon the greatest and loveliest stronghold of the Koran, illumined by the mystic light of innumerable martyrdoms, and surrounded by the souls of the countless heroes of so many generations, all the soldiers and all the magnates, kings, princes, bishops, ricos-hombres, and all beholders whose hearts throbbed with the Catholic faith and with love for their Spanish fatherland, knelt upon the ground, with cross-folded arms, and to the mystic sound of trumpets and clarions as to the tones of some vast organ they intoned a devout "Te Deum," which rose as it were from the heart of the whole nation—a nation that for seven centuries had fought for the sacred prizes of independence and unity, from Covadonga to Granada. Moreover, that sublime day was a time of resurrection. The graves were opened and the dead arose! Yes, five hundred captives joined from their dungeons in the "Te Deum" whose sublime strains proclaimed the redemption of our liberties; and, even before it ceased, they came forth to freedom, singing the chants of their own faith, and laying their riven fetters on the altars of their country. THE reconquest achieved, Columbus found himself face to face with the miracle thus wrought by the dauntless will of a people who, confined within a narrow territory, and unaided from any quarter, by their ardent faith and native valor, for the space of seven centuries, had held at bay, and in the end vanquished, the teeming continents of Africa and Asia, whose tribes, inured to arms, reared in a warlike creed, and led by a warrior prophet, strove in vain against them with equal courage and resoluteness. Two great national virtues overcame them, fearlessness and constancy. The hour had sounded for turning these forces to the achievement of another and no less stupendous work. Columbus beheld the Moorish king on bended knees before the queen, a sinking world before the noontide sun; and he beheld the cardinal, Mendoza, upon the Vermilion Tower, holding aloft the cross that shone, beneath that blue sky and upon that ruddy height, like a resplendent star, heralding sublime ideas and consolatory hopes. In his eyes, nothing was impossible to a living faith backed by a resolute will. The "Te Deum" of the Vega, chanted in presence of a broken and ruined people, was to his soul a forecast of the future mysterious hymn of praise in presence of a new-born race and a virgin land. He could wait no longer; the declining forces of his life renewed their ardor, and impatience mastered him as the tempest sways the tree. No middle course was now possible between the alternatives confronting him; he must either seek in other lands a better opening for his schemes, or win from the power of the sovereigns the three caravels he had begged in vain for twenty years from all the principal states of opulent Europe. Another junta of learned men appears to have assembled under the presidency of Cardinal Mendoza, very similar in its outcome to the council held under Talavera at Cordova, and under Deza at Salamanca. Geraldini often refers to it, and tells how the old stereotyped arguments were repeated, which the prophet had controverted a thousand times before. Geraldini stood behind Mendoza while the blind opponents of progress were hotly urging their adverse arguments, all based on reminiscences of erroneous teachings culled from such authors as St. Augustine. "Good theologians, these, but mighty poor cosmographers," said the young Italian churchman to the venerable Spanish bishop. To deny the existence of a southern hemisphere when the Portuguese, in several of their expeditions, had lost sight of the north star, seemed to him a piece of folly. The impulsive cardinal took up the idea, and insisted on a favorable decision, in spite of the opposition that found vent in coarse and taunting sarcasm. The court of the sovereigns was constrained to give the discoverer another hearing, and he presented his proposals as though there could be neither doubt nor uncertainty as to the result. He spoke so confidently and so resolutely that one might have thought him already the owner of his newly discovered lands; and, assuming the discovery as a fact, he discussed its territorial organization and civil government. He demanded the supreme office of admiral, whereby he would become almost a king among kings, for the title carried with it the rank of a grandee of Castile, who remained bonneted before his sovereign. He next demanded the office of viceroy over all the peoples and countries he should discover. Furthermore, he demanded the tenth part of all the revenues, and to sit as a judge in any tribunal which might have cognizance of litigation growing out of such appropriation of the lands and division of the profits. And as the means of successful discovery, he asked for three caravels, well equipped, and a goodly allowance of maravedís. The reaction caused by these extraordinary pretensions sent the scheme abruptly back to the beginning. Talavera, opposed by Mendoza in those days and somewhat lessened in importance since the fall of Granada, became again indignant, and declared that it was intolerable that such a tattered beggar should put on the airs of a king. Ferdinand, although surrounded by a court altogether favorable to Columbus, foresaw with anxiety the revival on the other side of the ocean of the feudal powers he had with such effort combated at home. Many persons affirmed that, if the scheme succeeded, Columbus would at a single bound become a king; and if it failed he would lose little, while the Catholic Sovereigns would be made ridiculous in the eyes of the world; for which reasons this crack-brained and absurdly ambitious visionary should be packed off to scrape his tiresome fiddle elsewhere. On the other hand, never before had the discoverer shown such masterful prescience and strength of will. He beheld the success of his enterprise so absolutely assured; his new lands seemed to him so tangible, and the seas so thickly peopled; he so positively saw the Great Khan as a living reality, the kingdom of Cathay resplendent with gold, the island of Cipango fringed with spice-trees and begirt with pearls, that he adhered obstinately to his demands, and declined to chaffer away for empty honors the gold and gems whose glitter dazzled his eyes as one entranced with the sight of such wondrous things. Upon being thus contemptuously dismissed, he mounted his mule and galloped with a loose rein toward Cordova, to bid farewell to his loved ones and thence to shape a new course to France, where he proposed to deliver over, without hesitancy, the absolute ownership of the schemes which purblind Spain had rejected. Amid the half-conscious reveries of that journey, the bitter reflection possessed his mind that he had chosen the Iberian peninsula as his startingpoint, as being the most westerly part of Europe and the nearest to the East Indies by the westward course, yet none of the great Iberian sovereigns, of Castile, of Portugal, or of Aragon, had believed in him. Ferdinand, being above all else a statesman, remained well contented that there was little prospect of the revival of feudalism beyond the seas after its death-blow here; but Isabella, of higher and more devout nature, more trustful, gentle, and poetical than he, regretted that she might not add to the great work achieved on land another greater sea-venture, nor give to the Church of God new regions to be consecrated and new races to be baptized as a fruit of those promise-laden victories. Aware of her feelings, the adherents of Columbus sought the queen, and earnestly represented her loss in the dismissal of the prophet and the rejection of his prophecy. Quintanilla the comptroller; Deza the learned; Mendoza the cardinal; Medinaceli the potentate; Geraldini the influential; Cabrera the royal steward; the trusted governess of the infante Don John; the famous count who, because of his close but mysterious kinship with the cardinal, stood with him on the summit of the watch-tower of Granada; Marchena, the intimate associate of the discoverer, conning with him the same books and the same stars,-all these ardently joined in earnest but respectful appeal to the sovereigns not to withhold the new world from the Church nor such an unfading laurel-crown from the nation. But alas! even prophets and sibyls encounter in this world the stumbling-block which now baffled these two Titans of our story-the lack of funds. They possessed all else: faith, genius, inspiration, prophetic intuitions, but no money. It was as though they possessed nothing. Lope puts into the mouth of Columbus, in a dialogue with Ferdinand, who earnestly invites the discoverer to ask of him the wherewithal to prosecute the discovery, the following verses: Sire, give me gold, for gold is all in all, As it happened, Isabella had no money at hand. Her war with Granada had cost a prodigious sum. She found herself in debt even to her own servants. Political reasons, of great weight with the resolute Ferdinand, who was justly content with the practical results of concentration of power, and economical reasons, of great weight also with the conscientious Isabella, who was most anxious to bring about |