Don Pedro de Meneses replied with much vigor, hurling back the Bishop’s accusations against exploration, and nailing his reverence’s misstatements as boldly as if the two were rival Congressmen. As for himself, Don Pedro said, he liked new continents, and believed that Portugal could not have too many of them. He considered Columbus a great man, and felt that it would be a precious privilege for other people to aid in the proposed transatlantic scheme. Nevertheless, the council decided against it, much, we are told, to the King’s disappointment. The Bishop of Ceuta, in spite of his remarks at the meeting of the committee, evidently thought there might be something in Columbus’s plan after all. He therefore proposed to the King that Columbus should be induced to furnish written proposals and specifications for the discovery of transatlantic countries, and that with the help of the information thus furnished the King should secretly send a vessel to test the practicability of the scheme. This was done, but the vessel returned after a few days, having discovered nothing but water. [Æt. 46–48; 1484] As soon as Columbus heard of this trick he became excessively angry, and resolved that King John should never have a square foot of new territory, nor a solitary heathen soul to convert, if he could help it. Accordingly, he broke off his acquaintance with the King, and proposed to leave Lisbon, in the mean time sending his brother Bartholomew to England to ask if the English King would like to order a supply of new islands or a transatlantic continent. His wife had already succumbed to her husband’s unremitting conversation concerning explorations, and died, doubtless with much resignation. Madame Perestrello, Pedro Correo, and Mrs. Columbus were probably only a few of the many unhappy Portuguese who suffered from the fatal conversational powers of Columbus, and Portugal may have become rather an unsafe place for him. This would account for the stealthy way in which he left that kingdom, and is at least as probable as the more common theory that he ran away to escape his creditors. It was in the year 1484 that Columbus, accompanied by his son Diego, shook the dust of Portugal from his feet and climbed over the back-fence into Spain, in the dead of night, instead of openly taking the regular mail-coach. The King of England had refused to listen to Bartholomew’s proposals, and King John had been guilty of conduct unbecoming a monarch and a gentleman. This may have given Columbus a prejudice against kings, for he made his next applications to the Dukes of Medina Sidonia and Medina Celi--two noblemen residing in the south of Spain. [Æt. 48; 1484–87]