The Son of Columbus

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“Remember, do not on your return appear puffed up with pride and make your companions smile by references to your father, and otherwise comport yourself with pride, which is folly.”

“But, my father,” answered Diego, “do you think that I am not, after all, human, and that I am not filled with pride at the thought of being your son? I will try not to show it too much; but I have ever told all my companions, and said it before Prince Juan, that my father, the Genoese navigator, would one day be acclaimed not only the greatest man in Spain, but the greatest man in all the world. I think I have been very modest in claiming so little.”

Diego spoke with such fire and earnestness, and with so much of boyish simplicity, that even the grave Admiral was forced to smile at the boy’s idea of modesty.

“Take pattern,” he said, “by Don Felipe. That youth has always had everything that the highest rank, the greatest fortune, could confer, yet see how little boastful he is.”

“But Don Felipe’s father was not to be named in the same breath with my father,” replied Diego, sturdily, and wagging his head.

“Very well,” said the Admiral, still smiling, “if you grow too boastful and self-conscious, I think I can depend upon your young companions to bring you to your proper senses.”

“Yes,” replied Diego, after a pause, and looking with a clear, frank gaze into the eyes of the Admiral. “And another thing will make me guard my behavior and control my tongue, which will be this: that my father has done so much, not only for Spain, but for the whole world, that the discovery is so vast, it means so much to mankind, that for me, the son of the discoverer, to be boastful would be mean beyond comparison. I have learned much, my father, in the time that I have lived at court. I have heard the conversation of the great Queen with mighty men like the Cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza and the Duke of Medina Cœli, and with statesmen and great generals and admirals and learned men. I have been under the care of the Duke de Medina Cœli, a man reckoned fit to train the heir to the throne, and with the nineteen other royal pages, all selected for their character and intelligence. The Queen does not value rank exclusively, and means that the companions of Prince Juan shall all be worthy of his friendship. When you sailed away, my father, I was a boy; now I am a man, I think as a man and feel as a man, and I hope I shall be able to act as a man. I cannot help feeling in my heart that I am the son of the greatest man in the world; but I know that I, myself, have done nothing; I have only reaped the benefit of what you have done, beginning, even before I was born, those eighteen years of eternal struggle, of heartbreaking disappointments. Do you think that in this triumphant hour I have forgotten the days so far away now when I was a little ragged, barefoot boy holding your hand and toiling along the country roads as well as I could, and when I was tired and footsore being carried in your arms? You were often tired and footsore, too, were you not? And so in my mind I have a pride in you such as no son ever felt before in a father, and a deep joy, and it only makes me feel my own nothingness, The only way I can ever prove myself worthy of being your son is by good conduct, and in that I will ever do my best.”

The Admiral listened with amazement as Diego proceeded. Here indeed was the transition in the mind and heart of a boy to the dignity of a man. Diego was no longer a mere lad to be guided and instructed. Much, it is true, was still for him to learn as men of intelligence learn from the beginning to the end of life; but his character was now fixed. He could stand alone, confident of his own integrity, looking boldly at the world around him, able to retrieve his own mistakes and to extricate himself from the perplexities of life and to protect himself amid its dangers. Something of this the Admiral said to him, clasping Diego to his breast. The father and the son, looking into each other’s eyes, so much alike, understood each other perfectly.

“I have never left any place so unwillingly in my life as I shall leave here to-morrow,” said Diego; “but I will not say one word of complaint, and I shall be ready to mount before any of those who return with me.”