letter

"Your father.
.S.
.S.A.S.
XMY
Xpo FERENS."
This is the last letter of Columbus known to us otherwise an entirely unimportant
document, dealing with the most transient affairs. With it we gladly bring to an end this
exposure of a greedy and querulous period, which speaks so eloquently for itself that the
less we say and comment on it the better.
In the month of May the Admiral was well enough at last to undertake the journey to
Segovia. He travelled on a mule, and was accompanied by his brother Bartholomew and
his son Ferdinand. When he reached the Court he found the King civil and outwardly
attentive to his recitals, but apparently content with a show of civility and outward
attention. Columbus was becoming really a nuisance; that is the melancholy truth. The
King had his own affairs to attend to; he was already meditating a second marriage, and
thinking of the young bride he was to bring home to the vacant place of Isabella; and the
very iteration of Columbus's complaints and demands had made them lose all
significance for the King. He waved them aside with polite and empty promises, as
people do the demands of importunate children; and finally, to appease the Admiral and
to get rid of the intolerable nuisance of his applications, he referred the whole question,
first to Archbishop DEA, and then to the body of councillors which had been appointed
to interpret Queen Isabella's will. The whole question at issue was whether or not the
original agreement with Columbus, which had been made before his discoveries, should
be carried out. The King, who had foolishly subscribed to it simply as a matter of form,
never believing that anything much could come of it, was determined that it should not be
carried out, as it would give Columbus a wealth and power to which no mere subject of a
crown was entitled. The Admiral held fast to his privileges; the only thing that he would
consent to submit to arbitration was the question of his revenues; but his titles and
territorial authorities he absolutely stuck to. Of course the council did exactly what the
King had done. They talked about the thing a great deal, but they did nothing. Columbus
was an invalid and broken man, who might die any day, and it was obviously to their
interest to gain time by discussion and delay—a cruel game for our Christopher, who
knew his days on earth to be numbered, and who struggled in that web of time in which
mortals try to hurry the events of the present and delay the events of the future.
Meanwhile Philip of Austria and his wife Juana, Isabella's daughter, had arrived from
Flanders to assume the crown of Castile, which Isabella had bequeathed to them.
Columbus saw a chance for himself in this coming change, and he sent Bartholomew as
an envoy to greet the new Sovereigns, and to enlist their services on the Admiral's behalf.
Bartholomew was very well received, but he was too late to be of use to the Admiral,
whom he never saw again; and this is our farewell to Bartholomew, who passes out of
our narrative here. He went to Rome after Christopher's death on a mission to the Pope
concerning some fresh voyages of discovery; and in 1508 he made, so far as we know,
his one excursion into romance, when he assisted at the production of an illegitimate little
girl—his only descendant. He returned to Espanola under the governorship of his nephew
Diego, and died there in 1514—stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to
Christopher must be for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.
From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to Valladolid,
where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the Court had left to greet Philip and
Juana. He had been in attendance upon it for nearly a year, and without any results: and
now, as his infirmity increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing
up of wills and codicils—all very elaborate and precise. In these occupations his worldly
affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19, 1506, having finally ratified a will which
he had made in Segovia a year before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed
upon Diego and his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.