Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/213

187 HER CHARACTER. 187 unpopular. She sustained Ximenes in all his ob- chapter noxious, but salutary reforms. She seconded Co- 1- lumbus in the prosecution of his arduous enterprise, and shielded him from the calumny of his enemies. She did the same good service to her favorite, Gon- salvo de Cordova ; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt by both, as the last of their good fortune. ^^ Artifice and duplicity were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain, it is certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harbour- ing any petty distrust, or latent malice ; and, al- though stern in the execution and exaction of public justice, she made the most generous allowance, and even sometimes advances, to those who had person- ally injured her.^* But the principle, which gave a peculiar coloring ner piety. to every feature of Isabella's mind, was piety. It shone forth from the very depins of her soul with a heavenly radiance, which illuminated her whole character. Fortunately, her earliest years had been 33 The melancholy tone of Co- fuisse fatebatur, rege ipso quan- lumbus's correspondence after the quam minus benigno parumque queen's death, shows too well the liberali nunquam reginse voluntati color of his fortunes and feelings, reluctari auso. Id vero preeclare (Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tanquam verissimum apparuit elata lom. i. pp. 341 et seq.) The senti- regina." Vitae Illust. Virorum, p. meats of the Great Captain were 275. still more unequivocally expressed, 34 The reader may recall a strik- according to Giovio. " Nee multis ing example of this, in the early inde diebus Regina fato concessit, part of her leign, in her great ten- incredibili cum dolore atque jactu- derness and forbearance towards ra Consalvi; nam ab ea tanquam the humors of Carillo, archbishop alumnus, ac in ejus regia educatus, of Toledo, her quondam friend, but cuncta quae exoptari possent virtulis then her most implacable foe. et dignitatis incrementa ademptum