She took the letter to King Ferdinand, and at once both the king and the queen hastened to send a messenger to Columbus telling him how angry and sorry they were that Bobadilla should have dared to treat their good friend the Admiral so.  They ordered his immediate release from imprisonment; they sent him a present of five thousand dollars and asked him to come to court at once.

On the seventeenth of December, 1500, Columbus came to the court at Granada in the beautiful palace of the Alhambra.  He rode on a mule.  At that time, in Spain, people were not allowed to ride on mules, because if they did the Spanish horses would not be bought and sold, as mules were so much cheaper and were easier to ride.  But Columbus was sick and it hurt him to ride horseback, while he could be fairly comfortable on an easy-going mule.  So the king and queen gave him special permission to come on mule-back.

When Columbus appeared before the queen, looking so sick and troubled, Isabella was greatly affected.  She thought of all he had done and all he had gone through and all he had suffered, and as he came to the steps of the throne the queen burst into tears.  That made Columbus cry too, for he thought a great deal of the queen, and he fell at her feet and told her how much he honored her, and how much he was ready to do for her, if he could but have the chance.

Then the king and queen told him how sorry they were that any one should have so misunderstood their desires and have treated their brave and loyal Admiral so shamefully.  They promised to make everything all right for him again, and to show him that they were his good friends now as they always had been since the day he first sailed away to find the Indies for them and for Spain.

Of course this made Columbus feel much better.  He had left Hayti in fear and trembling.  He had come home expecting something dreadful was going to happen; he would not have been surprised at a long imprisonment; he would not even have been surprised if he had been put to death—­for the kings and queens and high lords of his day were very apt to order people put to death if they did not like what had been done.  The harsh way in which Bobadilla had treated him made him think the king and queen had really ordered it.  Perhaps they had; and perhaps the way in which the people cried out in indignation when they saw the great Admiral brought ashore in chains had its influence on Queen Isabella.  King Ferdinand really cared nothing about it.  He would gladly have seen Columbus put in prison for life; but the queen had very much to say about things in her kingdom, and so King Ferdinand made believe he was sorry and talked quite as pleasantly to Columbus as did the queen.

Now Columbus, as you must have found out by this time, was as quick to feel glad as he was to feel sad.  And when he found that the king and queen were his friends once more, he became full of hope again and began to say where he would go and what he would do when he went back again as Viceroy of the Indies and Admiral of the Ocean Seas.  He begged the queen to let him go back again at once, with ships and sailors and the power to do as he pleased in the islands he had found and in the lands he hoped to find.