[Sidenote: 1493. June 19. Carjaval's oration.]
It happened on June 19, 1493, but a few weeks after the Pope had made his first public recognition of the discovery, that the Spanish ambassador at the Papal Court, Bernardin de Carjaval, referred in an oration to "the unknown lands, lately found, lying towards the Indies;" and at about the same time there was but a mere reference to the event in the _Los Tratados_ of Doctor Alonso Ortis, published at Seville.
While this strange bruit was thus spreading more or less, we get some glimpses of the personal life of Columbus during these days of his sojourn in Barcelona. We hear of him riding through the streets on horseback, on one side of the King, with Prince Juan on the other.
[Sidenote: Reward for first seeing land.]
We find record of his being awarded the pension of thirty crowns, as the first discoverer of land, by virtue of the mysterious light, and Irving thinks that we may condone this theft from the brave sailor who unquestionably saw land the first, by remembering that "Columbus's whole ambition was involved." It seems to others that his whole character was involved.
We find him a guest at a banquet given by Cardinal Mendoza, and the well-known story of his making an egg stand upright, by chipping one end of it, is associated with this merriment of the table. An impertinent question of a shallow courtier had induced Columbus to show a table full of guests that it was easy enough to do anything when the way was pointed out. The story, except as belonging to a traditional stock of anecdotes, dating far back of Columbus, always ready for an application, has no authority earlier than Benzoni, and loses its point in the destruction of the end on which the aim was to make it stand. This has been so palpable to some of the repeaters of the story that they have supposed that the feat was accomplished, not by cracking the end of the egg, but by using a quick motion which broke the sack which holds the yolk, so that that weightier substance settled at one end, and balanced the egg in an upright position.
So passed the time with the new-made hero, in drinking, as Irving expresses it, "the honeyed draught of popularity before enmity and detraction had time to drug it with bitterness."