ree learned opinions against one Idea; the Idea
is bound to go. They would no doubt question Columbus on the scientific
aspect of the matter, and would soon discover his grievous lack of
academic knowledge. They would quote fluently passages from writers that
he had not heard of; if he had not heard of them, they seemed to imply,
no wonder he made such foolish proposals. Poor Columbus stands there
puzzled, dissatisfied, tongue-tied. He cannot answer these wiseacres in
their own learned lingo; what they say, or what they quote, may be true
or it may not; but it has nothing to do with his Idea. If he opens his
mouth to justify himself, they refute him with arguments that he does not
understand; there is a wall between them. More than a wall; there is a
world between them! It is his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his
'expecto' against their 'non video'. Yet in his 'credo' there lies a
power of which they do not dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note
across the centuries, saluting the life force that opposes its
irresistible "I will" to the feeble "Thou canst not" of the worldly-wise.
Thus, in about the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon
our ignorant Christopher. Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the
Jew, and the Right Reverend Cazadilla, Bishop of Ceuta; three risen,
stuffed to the eyes and ears with learning; stuffed so full indeed that
eyes and ears are closed with it. And three men, it would appear, wholly
destitute of mother-wit.

After all his preparations this rebuff must have been a serious blow to
Columbus. It was not his only trouble, moreover. During the last year
he had been earning nothing; he was already in imagination the Admiral of
the Ocean Seas; and in the anticipation of the much higher duties to
which he hoped to be devoted it is not likely that he would continue at
his humble task of making maps and charts. The result was that he got
into debt, and it was absolutely necessary that something should be done.
But a darker trouble had also almost certainly come to him about this
time. Neither the day nor the year of Philippa's death is known;
but it is likely that it occurred soon after Columbus's failure at the
Portuguese Court, and immediately before his departure into Spain. That
anonymous life, fulfilling itself so obscurely in companionship and
motherhood, as softly as it floated upon the page of history, as softly
fades from it again. Those kind