Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/33

 The council to whose judgment the scheme of Columbus was submitted consisted of the Roderigo and Joseph already mentioned, and of the king's confessor, Diego Ortiz de Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta, who condemned it without hesitation. The king, however, feeling perhaps not altogether convinced by the arguments adduced against it, privately sent out a vessel to test the route mapped out by Columbus, obtaining no result except that of driving the greatest man of the age away from his court, disgusted with the duplicity which, while openly discrediting their author, could thus seek to use his plans.

COLUMBUS BEFORE THE COUNCIL.

The ignorant pilots commissioned to work out the route conceived by the master-mind of the great mariner, returned to Lisbon without venturing beyond the beaten track; and in the ensuing year Columbus secretly left Lisbon, taking with him his young son Diego. We all know the story of his scornful reception at the court of Genoa, and of his arrival, after long wanderings to and fro, footsore, hungry and disheartened, at the gate of La Rabida, a Franciscan convent in Andalusia, to beg a little bread and water for his starving child.

This simple and pathetic request formed the turning-point of Columbus's career. The prior of the convent, Don Juan Perez de Marchina, whose name