“Ah! ah! that will be too unjust; it ought not to be,” they all repeated.
“Yes,” continued this far-seeing interlocutor, shaking his head contemptuously, “the king has no money to pay us. War has drained his private treasury, but he nevertheless draws from it abundant means to ransom French princes, who make him believe they will marry him to that lady Boleyn; and if you do not believe me, go ask these Frenchmen who are here present,” he added, raising his voice, and casting on MM. du Bellay and de Vaux a glance of cold, disdainful wrath.
M. du Bellay had lost nothing of the conversation; it was held too near him, and was too openly hostile for him to feign not to remark it. Finding himself recognized, and neither being able to reply to a positive interrogation nor to keep silence, he measured in his turn, very coolly, and without permitting the least indication of emotion or anger to appear, the face and form of his adversary.
“Sir;” he exclaimed, regarding him steadily, “who are you, and by what right do you call me to account? If it is your curiosity that impels you, it will not be gratified; if, on the contrary, you dare seek to insult me, you should know I will not suffer it. Answer me!”
“The best you can make of it will be worth nothing,” replied, with a loud burst of laughter, a Genoese merchant who did not recognize the ambassador, as he sat by the men who directed the boat. “Forget your quarrel, gentlemen, and, instead of disputing, come look at this beautiful vessel we are just going to pass. See, she is getting ready to sail. A fine ship-load!—a set of adventurers who go to try their fortunes in the new world discovered by one of my countrymen,” he added with an air of intense satisfaction.
“Poor Columbus!” replied one of the citizens, “he experienced throughout his life that glory does not give happiness, and envy and ingratitude united together to crush his genius. Do you not believe, if he could have foreseen the cruelties Hernando Cortez and Pizarro exercised toward the people whom he discovered, he would have preferred leaving the secret of their existence buried for ever in the bosom of the stormy sea that bore him to Europe, rather than to have announced there the success of his voyage?”
“I believe it,” said Wrilliot, “his soul was so beautiful! He loved humanity.”
“Christopher Columbus!” exclaimed young William, full of youthful enthusiasm and admiration for a man whose home was the ocean. “I cannot hear his name pronounced without emotion! I always imagine I see him in that old convent of Salamanca, before those learned professors and erudite monks assembled to listen to a project which in their opinion was as rash as it was foolish.
“‘How do you suppose,’ said they, ‘that your vessel will ever reach the extremity of the Indies, since you pretend that the earth is round? You would never be able to return; for what amount of wind do you imagine it would require to enable your ship to remount the liquid mountain which it had so easily descended? And do you forget that no creature can live under the scorching atmosphere of the torrid zone?’
“Columbus refuted their arguments; but these doctors still insisted, nor hesitated to openly demand of him how he could be so presumptuous as to believe, if the thing had been as he said, it could have remained undiscovered by so many illustrious men, born before him, and who had attained the highest degree of learning, while for him alone should have been reserved the development of this grand idea.”