In the meanwhile Ferdinand and his wife were too busy to examine closely themselves into the pros and cons of Colon’s scheme, and followed the traditional course in such circumstances, that of referring the matter to a commission of experts and learned men to sift and report. The president of the commission was that mild-mannered but arrogant-minded confessor of the Queen, Father Talavera; the man of one idea whom the conquest of Granada for the cross blinded to all other objects in life. With him for the most part were men like himself, saturated with the tradition of the church, that looked upon all innovation as impiety, and all they did not understand as an invention of the evil one. So, when Colon sat with them and expounded his theories to what he knew were unsympathetic ears, he kept back his most convincing proofs and arguments; for his treatment in Portugal had taught him caution.[55] There were two, at least, of the members of the commission who fought hard for Colon’s view, Dr. Maldonado and the young friar Antonio de Marchena, but they were outvoted; and when the report was presented it said that Colon’s project was impossible, and that after so many thousands of years he could not discover unknown lands, and so surpass an almost infinite number of clever men who were experienced in navigation.[56] Hardly had Talavera and his colleagues assured the sovereigns that the whole plan was impossible and vain, unfit for royal personages to patronise,[57] than Ferdinand again took the field (20th May), and once more Cristobal Colon was faced by failure. But he was a man not easily beaten. During his stay at Cordova he had made many friends, and gained many protectors at Court. First was his close acquaintance, Luis de Sant’angel, by whose intervention he was so promptly received by the sovereigns after their arrival at Cordova; but others there were of much higher rank: the great Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Mendoza, the tutor of the Prince Don Juan, Friar Diego Deza, Friar Juan Perez, who had first received Colon at La Rabida, and was now at court, Alonso de Quintanilla, the Queen’s secretary, Juan Cabero, the intimate Aragonese friend and chamberlain of the King; and one who probably did more in his favour quietly than any one else, that inseparable companion of Isabel, Beatriz de Bobadilla, now Marchioness of Moya.