to walk up to the
rich and fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is well dressed,
and where those kindling eyes of his may indulge a cool taste for
feminine beauty.

While the chapel bell is ringing other people are hurrying through the
sunny Lisbon streets to Mass at the convent. Among the fashionable
throng are two ladies, one young, one middle-aged; they separate at the
church door, and the younger one leaves her mother and takes her place in
the convent choir. This is Philippa Moniz, who lives alone with her
mother in Lisbon, and amuses herself with her privileges as a cavaliera,
or dame, in one of the knightly orders attached to the rich convent of
Saints. Perhaps she has noticed the tall figure of the young Genoese in
the strangers' part of the convent, perhaps not; but his roving blue eye
has noticed her, and much is to come of it. The young Genoese continues
his regular and exemplary attendance at the divine Office, the young lady
is zealous in observing her duties in the choir; some kind friend
introduces them; the audacious young man makes his proposals, and,
in spite of the melancholy protests of the young lady's exceedingly
respectable and highly-connected relatives, the young people are
betrothed and actually married before the elders have time to recover
breath from their first shock at the absurdity of the suggestion.

There is a very curious fact in connection with his marriage that is
worthy of our consideration. In all his voluminous writings, letters,
memoirs, and journals, Columbus never once mentions his wife. His sole
reference to her is in his will, made at Valladolid many years later,
long after her death; and is contained in the two words "my wife."
He ordains that a chapel shall be erected and masses said for the repose
of the souls of his father, his mother, and his wife. He who wrote so
much, did not write of her; he who boasted so much, never boasted of her;
he who bemoaned so much, never bemoaned her. There is a blank silence
on his part about everything connected with his marriage and his wife.
I like to think that it was because this marriage, which incidentally
furnished him with one of the great impulses of his career, was in itself
placid and uneventful, and belongs to that mass of happy days that do not
make history. Columbus was not a passionate man. I think that love had
a very small place in his life, and that the fever of passion was with
him brief and soon f