COLUMBUS—[Quickened.] There is my hope! If I could go and tell them: therein is their hope! They shall not, like Spain, succeed.
CERVANTES—[Not turning.] Your voice rings glad?
COLUMBUS—Why should I not be glad? The New World is in them, underneath the Towers. When they have learned that they can not succeed: that all the Towers and all the machines and all the gold on earth can not crush down this unborn need in them for a true New World—then it will arise.
CERVANTES—[turns and looks at COLUMBUS.] You speak in Parables.
COLUMBUS—I am a practical man.
CERVANTES—I am sick of parables and stories.
COLUMBUS—Good. You want history? The Book of Moses—is that history enough for your hard sense? Well, do you recall how the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt? They too crossed a Sea. But did they come into their promised land, their new world flowing with milk and honey, when they had crossed the sea?
CERVANTES—Yes. After forty years.
COLUMBUS—You are a shallow reader. Not one came into the Promised Land—not even Moses! They went into the wilderness, and they died. From Marah to the wilderness of Sin, from Horeb to the wilderness of Moab—they roamed, and rotted, and were dead forever! Not Aaron the Priest, not Miriam the mother, not Moses the Prophet came to the Promised Land. For it is written that the Seed shall die, ere Life may be reborn.
CERVANTES—[Incredulous.] If that is Death yonder across the sea, it is a death most stable and most splendid.