er, and went to live in
the house of his mother-in-law. This was a great social step for the
wool-weaver of Genoa; and it was probably the result of a kind of
compromise with his wife's horrified relatives at the time of her
marriage. It was doubtless thought impossible for her to go and live
over the chart-maker's shop; and as you can make charts in one house as
well as another, it was decided that Columbus should live with his
mother-in-law, and follow his trade under her roof. Columbus, in fact,
seems to have been fortunate in securing the favour of his female
relatives-in-law, and it was probably owing to the championship of
Philippa's mother that a marriage so much to his advantage ever took
place at all. His wife had many distinguished relatives in the
neighbourhood of Lisbon; her cousin was archbishop at this very time;
but I can neither find that their marriage was celebrated with the
archiepiscopal blessing or that he ever got much help or countenance from
the male members of the Moniz family. Archbishops even today do not much
like their pretty cousins marrying a man of Columbus's position, whether
you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a bookseller.
"Adventurer" is perhaps the truest description of him; and the word was
as much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century
as it is to-day.

Those of his new relatives, however, who did get to know him soon began
to see that Philippa had not made such a bad bargain after all. With the
confidence and added belief in himself that the recognition and
encouragement of those kind women brought him, Columbus's mind and
imagination expanded; and I think it was probably now that he began to
wonder if all his knowledge and seamanship, his quite useful smattering
of cartography and cosmography, his real love of adventure, and all his
dreams and speculations concerning the unknown and uncharted seas, could
not be turned to some practical account. His wife's step-sister Iseult
and her husband had, moreover, only lately returned to Lisbon from their
long residence in Porto Santo; young Bartolomeo Perestrello, her brother,
was reigning there in their stead, and no doubt sending home interesting
accounts of ships and navigators that put in at Madeira; and all the
circumstances would tend to fan the spark of Columbus's desire to have
some adventure and glory of his own on the high seas. He would wish
to show all these grandees, with wh