of December, he saw Boabdil, the elder of the two rival Kings of Granada, surrender all his rights and claims to Spain.  Surely now there will be a chance for him?  No; there is another interruption, this time occasioned by the royal preparations for the marriage of the Princess Isabella to the heir of Portugal.  Poor Columbus, sickened and disappointed by these continual delays, irritated by a sense of the waste of his precious time, follows the Court about from one place to another, raising a smile here and a scoff there, and pointed at by children in the street.  There, is nothing so ludicrous as an Idea to those who do not share it.

Another summer, another winter, lost out of a life made up of a limited number of summers and winters; a few more winters and summers, thinks Christopher, and I shall be in a world where Ideas are not needed, and where there is nothing left to discover!  Something had to be done.  In the beginning of 1491 there was only one thing spoken of at Court—­the preparations for the siege of Granada, which did not interest Columbus at all.  The camp of King Ferdinand was situated at Santa Fe, a few miles to the westward of Granada, and Columbus came here late in the year, determined to get a final answer one way or the other to his question.  He made his application, and the busy monarchs once more adopted their usual polite tactics.  They appointed a junta, which was presided over by no less a person than the Cardinal of Spain, Gonzales de Mendoza:  Once more the weary business was gone through, but Columbus must have had some hopes of success, since he did not produce his forged Toscanelli correspondence.  It was no scruple of conscience that held him back, we may be sure; the crafty Genoese knew nothing about such scruples in the attainment of a great object; he would not have hesitated to adopt any means to secure an end which he felt to be so desirable.  So it is probable that either he was not quite sure of his ground and his courage failed him, or that he had hopes, owing to his friendship with so many of the members of the junta, that a favourable decision would at last be arrived at.  In this he was mistaken.  The Spanish prelates again quoted the Fathers of the Church, and disposed of his proposals simply on the ground that they were heretical.  Much talk, and much wagging of learned heads; and still no mother-wit or gleam of light on this obscurity of learning.  The junta decided against the proposals, and reported its decision to the King and Queen.  The monarchs, true to their somewhat hedging methods when there was anything to be gained by hedging, informed Columbus that at present they were too much occupied with the war to grant his requests; but that, when the preoccupations and expenses of the campaign were a thing of the past, they might again turn their attention to his very interesting suggestion.