VIDA Y ESCRITOS.

...judicious conduct, worthy of a mature age, has nonetheless been the cause for some writers to hold Oviedo to be suspect, as far as the history of Columbus is concerned 14. In the meantime, with the second expedition of the admiral arranged, many servants of the Royal house, friends or acquaintances of Gonzalo, asked to follow him, whom he begged to communicate to him everything they found worthy of memory. In this same year of 1493, he met and interacted in Barcelona with Don Frey Nicolás de Ovando 15, commander of Larés, who in 1502 was named governor of the island of Hispaniola, whose capital received considerable increases from his hands.

The court returned to Castile in 1494, and with it Gonzalo Fernandez 16, of whom Don Juan, his lord, showed himself more fond day by day. Meanwhile, the weddings of the prince and Princess Margarita, sister of the Archduke of Austria, having been arranged, the Catholic Sovereigns determined in 1496 to set up his household and surround him with the most illustrious youth and the most experienced knights. Oviedo, who had not yet left the sphere of a youth, managed then for Prince Don Juan himself to entrust to him, with a title signed by his own hand, the custody and keys of his chamber, a position for which he showed himself to be honored and satisfied 17.

14 Washington Irving in his Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Appendix no. 28) does not hesitate to ensure that one should not trust the history of Oviedo in matters relative to the admiral, supposing him, like the pilot Hernan Perez Mateo, to be a partisan of the Pinzones. To dispel this idea offensive to Oviedo, whose sincerity and affection for Columbus is recognized from the first lines of his work, it would suffice for us to cite the following words: "Goths are they and Spaniards who found these our Indies, vassals of your Majesty and of the royal crown of Castile, guided by the industry of that memorable first admiral of them, Don Christopher Columbus, whose memory cannot have an end, because although everything written and to be written on earth perishes, in heaven such a famous history will be perpetuated... Of whose successors of this admiral, it seems to me and it is reasonable that there remains a continuous and perpetual agreement in your Sacred Majesty and in all the kings of Castile, to honor and gratify and conserve the succession of Columbus and his house and to sustain it and increase it and estimate it, as a proper jewel and ornament of their kingdoms, since it was the cause of so many goods and that Christ and his Catholic faith in these Indies were served and increased" (Hist. Gen. y Nat. de Ind., Part II, lib. I, Proh.). Who speaks in this manner, can he be considered suspect?.. But Oviedo, upon whom one has wanted to throw the blot of ingratitude, is the first writer who has the glory of having considered Columbus deserving of having a statue erected to him, and not in just any manner, but a statue of gold. "Certainly (he says) that statue called holosphyraton hammered from one piece and the other of Leonino, who was the first of men who in the temple of Delphi placed a statue of solid gold of himself, Don Christopher Columbus deserves it much better, first discoverer and inventor of these Indies and first admiral of them in our times; for not like Leonino, who showing the art of oratory brought together the gold of his statue, but as a courageous and wise sailor and valiant captain he showed us this New World, so filled with gold that thousands of statues could have been made, etc." (Hist. Gen. y Nat. de Indias, Part I, lib. VI, cap. 8). It has been necessary for three centuries to pass for the homage (and certainly more humble) to be paid to Columbus that Oviedo intended to render him in the middle of the 16th century.

17 "In Almazan, year of 1496, the household was given to Prince Don Juan, my lord, because those who served him before that were settled in the books of the Catholic Queen, and our titles signed by H.R.H. and not the prince." And in another place: "I also had the keys (of the chamber) in the last days of the life of the prince" (Officios de la casa Real de Castilla.—Quing., Part III, Est. 23).