Yet even Isabel did not understand at once; or, if she did, caution and her intense preoccupation with the Moorish war delayed and hindered the practical fulfilment of her sympathy. Juntas of learned men met at her summons, and with academic coldness discussed and condemned the discoverer’s project. Those who did not make a mock of it declared that it savoured of heresy; while others, according to Columbus, to hide their ignorance invented hindrances and obstacles. A few courtiers, and notably the Marquis of Moya and his wife Beatriz de Bobadilla, Isabel’s most trusted servants, remained his staunch friends, but the real friend of Columbus in these years of anxiety, when he vainly followed the Court from Cordova to the frontier, and from siege to siege, was, in the words of Thacher, “Columbus himself.” This was the one man who insisted and persisted ... the man with a single thought, a powerful soul committed to one supreme purpose.... Whether he was inspired, elected, foreordained, it matters not. He thought he was all these things and the result was due to his own conception of himself. [Illustration: A CARAVEL UNDER SAIL FROM COLUMBUS’S FIRST LETTER ] In spite of his condemnation by learned men, Isabel had not forgotten him, and a quarterly salary of 3000 maravedis, small though it was, and messages, that she would herself examine his claims when she had time, kept them in touch; but such things could not satisfy an explorer, fretting to be once more on the broad seas. In 1491 he renewed his application for assistance. The Court was then at Santa Fé, pressing Boabdil to his last surrender, and before the conquest of Moslem Granada, the attraction of unknown islands paled. For the second time a committee of the learned declared the proposed journey impracticable and contrary to the opinions of Saint Augustine and the early Fathers; though Alessandro Geraldino, tutor of the royal Infantas, ventured to urge in Cardinal Mendoza’s ear, that Saint Augustine, no doubt a good theologian, might yet prove a bad geographer. Disgusted at his failure and the years he had wasted, Columbus with his son Diego turned his back on Santa Fé. His journey took him near the little seaside town of Palos, where at the Franciscan convent of La Rabida he sought food and shelter for the night. Its prior, Fra Juan Perez, once the Queen’s confessor, was delighted to have first-hand news from the seat of war, and eagerly welcomed his guest; with the result that all Christopher’s disappointed hopes came pouring out in a stream of eloquence that soon made a convert of his listener. A secret letter from the prior to the Queen, full of respectful expostulations, her quick response that Columbus should return at once to Court, her gift of 20,000 maravedis to provide him with suitable clothing and a mule,—and Juan Perez could write with fervent joy: