Perhaps some scholar may some day unearth the correspondence between Columbus and the French king; but at present we have only the hints given above, along with the fact that Columbus, when finally dismissed from Granada in 1492, started for France. In describing Columbus's suit in Spain the names of great churchmen-- cardinals, bishops, priests, monks,--will frequently appear, and it will be well to understand why his fate so often lay in their hands. During the Dark Ages the only people who received any education were the clergy. Their education gave them great power over the ignorant; and even after the dawn of the Renaissance, when other classes began to demand education, the clergy were still looked up to as possessing the bulk of the world's wisdom. Thus every king's counselors were mostly churchmen. If those ecclesiastics had always tried to deserve their reputation for wisdom, it might have been a good arrangement. Unfortunately, some were narrow- minded and gave their king bad advice; happily, some were wise and good as well as powerful, and a few of this sort in Spain helped Christopher Columbus to make his dreams come true. Many writers speak bitterly of the way in which King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella temporized with Columbus. It was hard, indeed, for a man burning up with a great and glorious plan to be kept so long from executing it; but a glance into Spanish affairs at the moment when the man brought his idea into Spain will show that its rulers were not so culpable after all. We have already seen how long and how vigorously the sovereigns were pushing the Moorish war; but this was not their only anxiety. Spain's finances, owing to the misrule of previous kings, were in a very bad way. To get money, taxes were raised; and high taxes, as we know, always cause dissatisfaction among the people. Then, too, a death-dealing pestilence swept over the land and claimed thousands of victims. This is only a partial account of Spain's woes at the time when the man with the idea arrived; but it shows clearly how the king and queen may have been too busy and too worried to give much time or money to a "dreaming foreigner." They gave him just enough of each to keep up his hopes and prevent him from going elsewhere. Columbus himself must have realized that he had not come at a fortunate time, and that there was nothing to do but to wait patiently.