Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/35

 A chilling message truly to one who had wasted the best years of his life "about what he had offered;" and Columbus, more truly disheartened by it than by the absolute silence of the sender, went back to his old friend at the convent of La Rabida, resolved to sever finally his connection with Spain. It is of this sad period of his history that the Laureate represents him as saying, long afterwards—

"No guess-work! I was certain of my goal; Some thought it heresy, but that would not hold. King David called the heavens a hide, a tent Spread over earth, and so this earth was flat; Some cited old Lactantius; could it be That trees grew downward, rain fell upward, men Walked like the fly on ceilings? and, besides, The great Augustine wrote that none could breathe Within the zone of heat; so might there be Two Adams, two mankinds, and that was clean Against God's word: thus was I beaten back, And chiefly to my sorrow by the Church, And thought to turn my face from Spain, appeal Once more to France or England."

But once more Perez and Fernandez cheered his drooping spirits. They would not hear of his deserting their country; yet another effort should be made to secure to it the glory of sending out the great hero of the age on what they were convinced would be a brilliant and successful enterprise.

With a skill which came of a full heart and a mind not easily to be turned from its purpose, the aged monk pressed his plea, urging the soured Columbus to give Spain another chance; and, observing that his eyes were turning toward France, whose king had sent him a most cordial letter, the Father Guardian did not fail to remind him how that fickle country had forsaken, in the hour of direst need, one of the most daring and noble of her children, Joan of Arc.

Such arguments slowly made way—the more surely, that the Father quoted several proofs that men of influence were beginning to interest themselves in the undertaking of Columbus. The explorer, therefore, at last consented to wait the issue of a letter which was now sent by Don Perez to the Spanish court, addressed, not to the King, but to the Queen. The answer, which speedily arrived, was cheering beyond all expectation; and, as it contained an invitation to the writer of the epistle to visit her, the old Prior of the