arguments of Columbus, became a warm believer in his project.  It is worthy of notice that a person who appears only once, as it were, in a sentence in history, should have exercised so much influence upon it as Garcia Hernandez, who was probably a man of far superior attainments to those around him, and was in the habit of deploring, as such men do, his hard lot in being placed where he could be so little understood.  Now, however, he was to do more at one stroke than many a man who has been all his days before the world.  Columbus had abandoned his suit at court in disgust, and had arrived at the monastery before quitting Spain to fetch his son Diego, whom he had left with Juan Perez to be educated.  All his griefs and struggles he confided to Perez, who could not bear to hear of his intention to leave the country for France or England, and to make a foreign nation greater by allowing it to adopt his project.  The three friends—­the monk, the learned physician, and the skilled cosmographer—­discussed together the propositions so unhappily familiar to the last named member of their little council.  The affection of Juan Perez and the learning of Hernandez were not slow to follow in the track which the enthusiasm of the great adventurer made out before them; and they became, no doubt, as convinced as Columbus himself of the feasibility of his undertaking.  The difficulty, however, was not in becoming believers themselves, but in persuading those to believe who would have power to further the enterprise.

  Perez writes to the queen.

Their discussions upon this point ended in the conclusion that Juan Perez, who was known to the queen, having acted as her confessor, should write to her highness.  He did so; and the result was favourable.  The queen sent for him, heard what he had to say, and in consequence remitted money to Columbus to enable him to come to Court and renew his suit.

  Columbus’s conditions.

He attended the court again; his negotiations were resumed, but were again broken off on the ground of the largeness of the conditions which he asked for.  His opponents said that these conditions were too large if he succeeded, and if he should not succeed and the conditions should come to nothing, they thought that there was an air of trifling in granting such conditions at all.  And, indeed, they wore very large; namely, that he was to be made an admiral at once, to be appointed viceroy of the countries he should discover, and to have an eighth of the profits of the expedition.  The only probable way of accounting for the extent of these demands and his perseverance in making them, even to the risk of total failure, is that the discovering of the Indies was but a step in his mind to greater undertakings, as they seemed to him, which he had in view, of going to Jerusalem with an army and making another crusade.  For Columbus carried the chivalrous ideas of the twelfth century