hearts also perhaps--hearts quick to burn, quick to forget. They had
forgotten him before, now they burned with indignation at the picture of
this venerable and much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.

His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through
the office of some friendly soul on board, immediately on his arrival at
Cadiz, was the first news from the ship received by the King and Queen,
and naturally it caused them a shock of surprise. It was followed by the
despatches from Bobadilla and by a letter from the Alcalde of Cadiz
announcing that Columbus and his brothers were in his custody awaiting
the royal orders. Perhaps Ferdinand and Isabella had already repented
their drastic action and had entertained some misgivings as to its
results; but it is more probable that they had put it out of their heads
altogether, and that their hasty action now was prompted as much by the
shock of being recalled to a consciousness of the troubled state of
affairs in the New World as by any real regret for what they had done.
Moreover they had sent out Bobadilla to quiet things down; and the first
result of it was that Spain was ringing with the scandal of the Admiral's
treatment. In that Spanish world, unsteadfast and unstable, when one end
of the see-saw was up the other must be down; and it was Columbus who now
found himself high up in the heavens of favour, and Bobadilla who was
seated in the dust. Equipoise any kind was apparently a thing
impossible; if one man was right the other man must be wrong; no excuses
for Bobadilla; every excuse for the Admiral.

The first official act, therefore, was an order for the immediate release
of the Admiral and his brothers, followed by an invitation for him to
proceed without delay to the Court at Granada, and an order for the
immediate payment to him of the sum of 2000 ducats [perhaps $250,000 in
the year 2000 D.W.] this last no ungenerous gift to a Viceroy whose