"Your father who loves you as himself"

"To-day is Monday. I will endeavour to have your uncle and brother start to-morrow.
Remember to write me very often, and tell Diego Mendez to write at length. Each day
messengers go from here yonder. May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
"Done in Seville, December 1.
"Your father who loves you as himself.
.S.
.S.A.S.
XMY
Xpo FERENS."
The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him, and he had
arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he was able to move. There is a
grim and dismal significance in the particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other
than the funeral bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for
Cardinal Mendoza. A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting to Columbus
of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to think that he ultimately made his
journey in a less grim though more humble method. But what are we to think of the taste
of a man who would rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the
splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of every-day use? It is but the
old passion for state and splendour thus dismally breaking out again.
He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his resources to the
payment of his crew; but that may be taken as an exaggeration. He may have borrowed,
but the man who can borrow easily from banks cannot be regarded as a poor man. One is
nevertheless grateful for these references, since they commemorate the Admiral's
unfailing loyalty to those who shared his hardships, and his unwearied efforts to see that
they received what was due to them. Pleasant also are the evidences of warm family
affection in those simple words of brotherly love, and the affecting advice to Diego that
he should love his brother Ferdinand as Christopher loved Bartholomew. It is a pleasant
oasis in this dreary, sordid wailing after thirds and tenths and eighths. Good Diego
Mendez, that honourable gentleman, was evidently also at Court at this time, honestly
striving, we may be sure, to say a good word for the Admiral.
Some time after this letter was written, and before the writing of the next, news reached
Seville of the death of Queen Isabella. For ten years her kind heart had been wrung by
many sorrows. Her mother had died in 1496; the next year her only son and heir to the
crown had followed; and within yet another year had died her favourite daughter, the
Queen of Portugal. Her other children were all scattered with the exception of Juana,
whose semi-imbecile condition caused her parents an anxiety greater even than that
caused by death. As Isabella's life thus closed sombrely in, she applied herself more
closely and more narrowly to such pious consolations as were available. News from
Flanders of the scandalous scenes between Philip and Juana in the summer of 1504
brought on an illness from which she really never recovered, a kind of feverish distress of
mind and body in which her only alleviation was the transaction of such business as was
possible for her in the direction of humanity and enlightenment. She still received men of
intellect and renown, especially travellers. But she knew that her end was near, and as
early as October she had made her will, in which her wishes as to the succession and
government of Castile were clearly laid down. There was no mention of Columbus in this
will, which afterwards greatly mortified him; but it is possible that the poor Queen had by
this time, even against her wish, come to share the opinions of her advisers that the rule
of Columbus in the West Indies had not brought the most humane and happy results
possible to the people there.
During October and November her life thus beat itself away in a succession of duties
faithfully performed, tasks duly finished, preparations for the great change duly made.
She died, as she would have wished to die, surrounded by friends who loved and admired
her, and fortified by the last rites of the Church for her journey into the unknown. Date,
November 26, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.