Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/49

Rh, examining the voluminous medley of lawsuits successively carried on in Spain on account of the inheritance of the descendants of Columbus, imagined he found a coruscation of historic light in a memorandum drawn up in behalf of a certain Diego Colon y Larriategui, but which was rejected by the court. The attorney needed, for his cause, to attack retrospectively, and through the course of ages, the legitimacy of the second son of Columbus, Don Fernando. As the proof of the illegitimacy did not result from any ostensible document, from any instrument either past or present, the crafty lawyer sought to deduce it, not from an expression which he found to his liking, but, on the contrary, from the absence of a word which he pretended to be necessary, although it did not gain him his cause. In his will, Columbus charged his heir to give a pension to Beatrix Enriquez, the mother of his second son, Don Fernando. That was very clear. But the testator did not precede with the title of wife the name of the lady. The attorney, from this circumstance, inferred the absence of the matrimonial tie, and consequently the illegitimacy of Fernando Columbus. Who would believe it? this contemptible quibble appeared a light to Napione! Thereupon he amplified quite a series of arguments of equal force, and presented, as a discovery he made on the civil status of Columbus, this miserable inference, due to the cavilling of the poor licentiate, Luis de la Palma y Freytas. Napione had thus, at a cheap rate, the honor of presenting new and keen views.

In 1809, a French antiquarian and bibliographer, Francois Cancellieri, expert in collecting and classifying facts, but destitute of philosophic acumen, repeated, without examination, the pretended inference made by Napione, of which, it must be said, nobody at first took notice. Hitherto this bold accusation, hazarded in a work of slender importance, did not imperil the good name of Columbus; but, according to the common proverb, "One is never betrayed but by his own" (les siens), some years