he remarks, "that there is no man so vile but thinks it his right to insult me. The day will come when the world will reckon it a virtue to him who has not given his consent to their abuse. If I had plundered the Indies, even to the country where is the fabled altar of St. Peter's, and had given them all to the Moors, they could not have shown towards me more bitter enmity than they have done in Spain. Who would believe such things of a country where there has always been so much nobility? I should much like to clear myself of this affair, if only it were consistent with etiquette to do so, face to face with my queen. . . . The slanders of worthless men," he continues, "have done me more injury than all my services have profited me. . . . I have had so strange a character given to me that if I were to build hospitals and churches, they would call them caves for robbers."
This letter, combined with other representations of the real facts of the case, and with the unmistakeable expression of public opinion, made a great impression on the mind of Isabella, and had at once the effect of relieving Columbus and his brothers from their ignoble imprisonment. He was invited to the court, then at Grenada, where he appeared on the 17th of December, not in a prison dress, and in the degraded position in which he had landed at Cadiz, but in rich attire, and attended by an honourable retinue. When the Queen saw the venerable navigator approach, she was moved to tears at sufferings to which she and Ferdinand had been the unwilling or unknowing parties—in so far that they had superseded him and given to his successor power to inflict
