CHAP. V I I . ]
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
ties, gave signal value to his favors.
275
He invited Columbus to a
banquet, where he assigned him the most honorable place at table, and had him served with the ceremonials which in those puncti lious times were observed towards sovereigns.
At this repast is
said to have occurred the well-known anecdote of the egg.
A
shallow courtier present, impatient of the honors paid to Colum bus, and meanly jealous of him as a foreigner, abruptly asked him whether he thought that, in case he had not discovered the Indies, there were not other men in Spain, who would have been capable of the enterprise ?
T o this Columbus made no immediate reply,
but, taking an egg, invited the company to make it stand on one end.
Every one attempted it, but in vain; whereupon he struck
it upon the table so as to break the end, and left it standing on the broken part; illustrating in this simple manner, that when he had once shown the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it.* The favor shown Columbus by the sovereigns, insured him for a time the caresses of the nobility ; for in a court every one vies with his neighbor in lavishing attentions upon the man " whom the king delighteth to honor."
Columbus bore all these caresses
and distinctions with becoming modesty, though he must have felt a proud satisfaction in the idea that they had been wrested, as it were, from the nation by his courage and perseverance.
One
can hardly recognize in the individual thus made the companion of princes, and the theme of general wonder and admiration, the * This anecdote rests on the authority of the Italian historian Benzoni, (lib. i. p. 12, ed. Venetia, 1572).
It has been condemned as trivial, but the sim
plicity of the reproof constitutes its severity, and was characteristic of the prac tical sagacity of Columbus.
The universal popularity of the anecdote is a
proof of its merit.
s 2