CHAP. I I ]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
465
At length the caravel bringing the official proceedings relative to the brothers Porras arrived at the Algarves, in Portugal, and Columbus looked forward with hope that all matters would soon be placed in a proper light. His anxiety to get to court became every day more intense. A litter was provided to convey him thither, and was actually at the door, but the inclemency of the weather and his increasing infirmities obliged him again to aban don the journey. His resource of letter-writing began to fail him : he could only write at night, for in the daytime the severity of his malady deprived him of the use of his hands. The tidings from the court were every day more and more adverse to his hopes ; the intrigues of his enemies were prevailing ; the coldhearted Ferdinand treated all his applications with indifference ; the generous Isabella lay dangerously ill. On her justice and magnanimity he still relied for the full restoration of his rights, and the redress of all his grievances. “ May it please the Holy Trinity,” says he, “ to restore our sovereign queen to health ; for by her will every thing be adjusted which is now in confusion." Alas ! while writing that letter, his noble benefactress was a corpse ! The health of Isabella had long been undermined by the shocks of repeated domestic calamities. The death of her only son, the prince Juan ; of her beloved daughter and bosom friend, the princess Isabella ; and of her grandson and prospective heir, the prince Miguel, had been three cruel wounds to a heart full of the tenderest sensibility. To these was added the constant grief caused by the evident infirmity of intellect of her daughter Juana, and the domestic unhappiness of that princess with her husband, the archduke Philip. The desolation which walks through palaces admits not the familiar sympathies and sweet consolations which alleviate the sorrows of common life. Isabella pined in state,