In the spring of 1489 Columbus was summoned to Seville, and was positively assured that this time he should have a satisfactory conference with a new assortment of learned men. But no sooner had he reached Seville than the King and Queen suddenly remembered that they had not had their usual spring war, and thereupon promptly started to attack the Moors. Columbus went with them, and fought with great gallantry. Probably it was in some measure due to a dread of his awful conversational powers that the Moorish king surrendered, and it is to the honor of the Christian monarchs that they did not abuse their victory by permitting Columbus to talk to the royal prisoner. Another year passed away, and still Columbus was waiting for a decision upon the feasibility of his plan. In the spring of 1491 he finally became so earnest in demanding a decision, that the King directed De Talavera and his learned friends to make their long-delayed report. They did so, assuring the King that it would be absurd for him to waste any money whatever in attempting to carry out the Italian’s utterly ridiculous plan. Still Ferdinand did not care to drive Columbus to despair, but politely informed him that after he should have finished the annual Moorish war upon which he was just about to enter, he would really try to think of the propriety of fitting out an expedition. Columbus had now been nearly seven years in Spain, waiting for the King to come to a final decision; and this last postponement exhausted his patience. The court had from time to time supplied him with money; but he was not willing to spend his life as a pensioner on the royal bounty, while the western continent was vainly calling to him to come over and discover it. He therefore left Seville, with the resolution to have nothing further to do with Spain, but to proceed to France and try what he could do with the French king. He seems to have journeyed on foot, for the very next time we hear of him is as a venerable and imposing tramp, accompanied by an unidentified small-boy, and asking for food--presumably buckwheat cakes, and eggs boiled precisely three minutes--at the gate of the convent of Santa Maria de Rabida. [Æt. 55; 1491] The Prior of the convent, Juan Perez de Marchena, happened to notice him, and entered into conversation with him. Columbus told him his name, and mentioned that he was on his way to a neighboring town to find his brother-in-law; from which we learn that four hundred years ago the myth of a brother-in-law in the next town was as familiar to the tramps of that period as it is to those of the present day. As the Prior listened to this story without making any remarks upon its improbability, Columbus was tempted to launch into general conversation, and in a few moments told him all about his desire to find a transatlantic continent, and his intention of offering to the King of France the privilege of assisting him.