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 into the somewhat self-seeking
fifteenth. The negotiation, however, failed a second time, and Columbus
resolved again to go to France, when Alonzo de Quintanilla and Juan Perez
contrived to obtain a hearing for the great adventurer from Cardinal
Mendoza, who was pleased with him. Columbus then offered, in order to meet
the objections of his opponents, to pay an eighth part of the expense of
the expedition. Still nothing was done.


SANTANGLE'S ADDRESS.