Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/61

Rh charms of Beatrix Enriquez. It was she alone that could determine him to remain for so long a time in Spain, and enable him to bear the delays he experienced.

The dates will give an answer to this imputation.

Like those rare flowers that will not bear being transplanted, that spring up, bloom, and die in the land where they grow, Beatrix Enriquez, born, raised, and married in Cordova, never passed the walls of that ancient city. Columbus could never enjoy the charm of her presence but in coming himself to Cordova. Now, Cordova is precisely the city in which he least remained, and in which his stay was the shortest, during his residence in Spain. He sojourned there only a few consecutive months the first year of his landing, which was that of his marriage. From that time his visits to Cordova were short and rare, — for duty imperiously required of him to be elsewhere. Official documents prove this.

In 1486, he was already domiciled in the ante-chambers.

In 1487, he was at Salamanca for the purpose of submitting his plan to the Scientific Congress assembled by royal order at that celebrated University. He remained there during the winter, and part of the spring.

He follows the Court unceasingly. Some orders paid by the treasurer, Francis Gonzales of Seville, prove that in May, July, August, and October, he was far away from Cordova. The pregnancy of Beatrix retained him so little by her, that at the time of her accouchement, the twenty-ninth of August, he was absent. The second day before, he had received four thousand maravedis, and gone to Court by order of the sovereigns. A payment made in October proves yet his absence from Cordova. Winter comes; the Court takes up its residence at Saragossa, and Columbus goes there.

In 1488, he is at Seville. It is there that the King of Portugal addresses him his letter of the twentieth of March.