The agreement with Colon was signed finally in Santa Fe on the 17th April 1492, and at the end of the month the great dreamer departed, this time with a light heart and rising hopes, to Palos and La Rabida to fit out his caravels, and sail on the 3rd August 1492 for his fateful voyage. With him went Isabel’s prayers and hopes; and during his tiresome and obstructed preparations at Palos, she aided him to the utmost by grants and precepts,[62] as well as by appointing his legitimate son, Diego, page to her heir, Prince Juan, in order that the lad might have a safe home during his father’s absence. Although Isabel’s action in the discovery may be less heroic and independent of her husband, than her enthusiastic biographers are fond of representing, it is certain that but for her Ferdinand would not have patronised the expedition. Looking at the whole circumstances, and his character, it is difficult to blame him, except at last for agreeing to terms that he knew were impossible of fulfilment, and which he probably never meant to fulfil. But Isabel’s idealism in this case was wiser than Ferdinand’s practical prudence, so far as the immediate result was concerned, and to Isabel the Catholic must be given the glory of having aided Columbus, rather than to her husband, who was persuaded against his will. Granada was conquered for Isabel, and it was now Ferdinand’s turn to have his way. For years Aragonese interests had had to wait, though, as Ferdinand well knew, the unifying process, which he needed for his ends, was being perfected the while. Under the stern rule of Torquemada the Inquisition had struck its tentacles into the nation’s heart, and, crazy with the pride of superiority over infidels, the orthodox Spaniard was rapidly developing the confidence in his divine selection to scourge the enemies of God, which made the nation temporarily great. Isabel was the inspiring soul of this feeling. A foreigner, visiting her court soon after Granada fell, wrote, as most contemporaries did of her, in enthusiastic praise of what we should now consider cruel bigotry. ‘Nothing is spoken of here,’ he says, ‘but making war on the enemies of the faith, and sweeping away all obstructions to the Holy Catholic Church. Not with worldly, but with heavenly aim, is all they undertake, and all they do seems inspired direct from heaven, as these sovereigns most surely are.’[63]