proved friendly, and invited Columbus to accompany him to the city of
Salamanca. The court was to pass the winter there, and Quintanilla hoped
to secure an audience for his new friend.

He was successful. Columbus spoke to King Ferdinand, and spoke
eloquently. He himself has described his enthusiasm by saying he felt
"kindled with fire from on high." This fire, unfortunately, did not
spread to his listener. The man to whom Columbus spoke was not given to
warm impulses. On the contrary, he was cold and shrewd. He never decided
matters hastily; least of all a matter that involved expenses. We do not
know exactly what answer Ferdinand made to the impassioned pleader, but
we do know that he first sought the opinions of the learned men of
Salamanca.

Concerning these opinions there are contradictory reports, just as there
are about all of Columbus's actions in Spain. Some say that the
ecclesiastics (who were also professors at the renowned university in
Salamanca) and a few scientific men besides met in the Convent of San
Esteban (St. Stephen) to discuss Columbus's project. To-day the monks in
San Esteban show tourists the very room in which the meeting was held;
yet there is not an atom of real proof that any such meeting took place
there. We only know that an informal gathering was called, and that
whoever the professors and churchmen were who listened to Columbus's
story, they were mostly narrow-minded; they had no imagination. Instead
of trying to see the bigness and the wonder of his belief, they looked
at Columbus suspiciously and said that they could find no mention of a
_round_ world in the Bible, and it was heresy to believe anything
that could not be found in the Bible. Others, believing in the sphere,
still could not find in Christopher's reference to the rumors current in
Madeira sufficient reason for giving him ships to test the truth of