The summer of 1504 Vespucci passed in Portugal, attending to matters connected with his last voyage, which had such an unsatisfactory ending; but in the latter part of that year we find him once again in Seville. It is presumed he was warmly welcomed by his wife, after this long absence of nearly four years; but nothing exists at all to indicate his marital relations, and so far as furnishing material for his biographers is concerned, he might as well have remained single all his life. In point of fact, Amerigo Vespucci, though sterling in his friendships, ardent and even affectionate, was a true celibate. He was wedded to Science, his whole nature was absorbed by the pursuits to which he had, perhaps fortuitously, devoted his maturer years. If we contrast him with Columbus, in respect to the higher qualities of his character, we cannot but be impressed by the difference between these two, for, while the latter was weak, impressionable, if not passionate, the former was strong, flawless in his morals, devoted ever to the star-eyed goddess in whose service he had enlisted for life. He was humane, generous, unselfish, while Columbus, though of more heroic proportions than his rival, was at times selfish, ungenerous, cruel--as witness his treatment of the Pinzons, his claiming the reward for the discovery of land, which rightly belonged to Rodrigo de Triana, his massacres of Indians in Hispaniola and enslavement of the survivors. Against Amerigo Vespucci no such charges of immorality, cruelty, and bigotry can be brought as against Columbus, and the sole accusation against him, of falsifying the date of his "first" voyage, has not been sustained by the evidence. His eulogist, Canovai, says of him, in somewhat extravagant terms: "Behold the transport of that lively emulation which springs from the indisputable consciousness of talents, and is nourished by the pure and delicate essence of virtue, which shines uncontaminated in every footstep of the hero. It seems enmity, but is laudable strife; it seems envy, but is a generous ambition. If Columbus had found rivals and enemies resembling Amerigo, I should not see, as now, the magnificent scene of his triumph so suddenly changed into mourning and horror, the gloomy night of ignominy and mockery succeed the brief light of ephemeral happiness, and that invincible leader, who redoubled the power and dominions of ungrateful Castile, groaning under the weight of infamous chains, while he asks for nothing but liberty to carry her arms to the most distant shores of the West.