r mind whether to take up the
affair or not, but if she should decide to do so she would be glad to
have the duke take part in it.[501] Meanwhile she referred the question
to Alonso de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile. This
was in the spring of 1491, when the whole country was in a buzz of
excitement with the preparations for the siege of Granada. The baffled
Columbus visited the sovereigns in camp, but could not get them to
attend to him, and early in the autumn, thoroughly disgusted and sick at
heart, he made up his mind to shake the dust of Castile from his feet
and see what could be done in France. In October or November he went to
Huelva, apparently to get his son Diego, who had been left there, in
charge of his aunt. It was probably his intention to take all the family
he had--Beatriz and her infant son Ferdinand, of whom he was extremely
fond, as well as Diego--and find a new home in either France or England,
besides ascertaining what had become of his brother Bartholomew, from
whom he had not heard a word since the latter left Portugal for
England.[502]

[Footnote 498: Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, cap. xci.]

[Footnote 499: Zuniga, _Anales de Sevilla_, lib. xii. p. 404.]

[Footnote 500: See the letter of March 19, 1493, from the Duke
of Medina-Celi to the Grand Cardinal of Spain (from the
archives of Simancas) in Navarrete _Coleccion de viages_, tom.
ii. p. 20.]

[Footnote 501: This promise was never fulfilled. When Columbus
returned in triumph, arriving March 6, 1493, at Lisbon, and
March 15 at Palos, the Duke of Medina-Celi wrote the letter
just cited, recalling the queen's promise and asking to be
allowed to send to the Indies once each year an expedition on
his own account; for, he says, if he had not kept Columbus with
him in 1490 and 1491 he would have gone to France, and Castile
would have lost the prize. There was some force in this, but
Isabella does not appear to have heeded the request.]

[Footnote 502: This theory of the situation is fully sustained
by Las Casas, tom. i. p. 241.]

[Sidenote: He stops at La Rabida, and meets the prior Juan Perez.]

[Sidenote: Perez writes to the queen,]

[Sidenote: and Columbus is summoned back to court.]

But now at length events took a favourable turn. Fate had grown tired of
fighting a