something about
Christopher's environment, and cleared up our doubts concerning his first
home; but he does not. He will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip
his wine, and say his Hail Marys, and watch the sails of the feluccas
leaning over the blue floor of the Mediterranean as long as you please;
but of information about son or family, not a word. He is content to
have survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us across the
night of time. 1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so hail and
farewell, Grandfather John.

Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know next
to nothing. Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa, Aunt
Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of them;
except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of Columbus, who
in after years, when he became famous, made themselves unpleasant, as
poor relations will, by recalling themselves to his remembrance and
suggesting that something might be done for them. I have a belief,
supported by no historical fact or document, that between the families of
Domenico and Antonio there was a mild cousinly feud. I believe they did
not like each other. Domenico, as we shall see presently, was sanguine
and venturesome, a great buyer and seller, a maker of bargains in which
he generally came off second best. Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa,
the paternal property, doubtless looked askance at these enterprises from
his vantage-ground of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion
of visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the
unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both
brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will,
this settled difference between their respective parents. This, of
course, may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely;
for Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of
his family, but never to our knowledge makes any reference to these
cousins of his, till they send emissaries to him in his hour of triumph.
At any rate, among the influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may
reckon this uncle and aunt and their children--dim ghosts to us, but to
him real people, who walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved
their limbs, like the men and women of our own time. Less of a ghost to
us, though still a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is D