At this audience it is not probable that Queen Isabella was present; at least, the only part of the discussion taken by the monarchs seems to have been that of the king. It is said that Columbus unfolded his scheme with entire self-possession. He appears to have been neither dazzled nor daunted; for in a letter to the sovereign, in 1501, he declares that on this occasion “he felt himself kindled as with a fire from on high, and considered himself as an agent chosen by Heaven to accomplish a grand design.” But so important a matter as that now urged upon the sovereigns was not to be entered upon lightly or in haste. However willing the king may have been to be the promoter of discoveries far more important than those which had shed glory upon Portugal, he was too cool and shrewd a man to decide a matter hastily which involved so many scientific principles. Of the details of what followed we have no authentic account. After more than a hundred years had passed away, and the glory of the discovery had come in some measure to be appreciated, the claim was set up that a congress or junta of learned men was called together, and that the whole subject was submitted to their consideration. The account, however, is accompanied with many suspicious circumstances. The historian Remesal was a Dominican monk and a member of the monastery of St. Stephen at Salamanca, where, it is said, the junta was held. In his narrative he claims that the ecclesiastical members, for the most part monks of St. Stephen, listened with approval to the presentation of the case, while those who might be called the scientific members strenuously opposed it. This statement, which is the basis of Irving’s account, is not only inherently improbable, but is supported by no contemporaneous evidence whatever. The absence of such evidence, moreover, is enough to condemn the whole story. The records of the monastery, which are supposed to be complete, contain no reference to any such meeting. Las Casas, himself a Dominican, would have been sure to introduce the account into his narrative if it had rested upon any basis of fact. He makes no allusion to any such meeting, and we are forced to conclude that the story was fabricated for ecclesiastical purposes. But although no such formal meeting was ever held, there is evidence that Ferdinand obtained, in an informal way, the opinions of some of the most learned men of the time.