When the courtiers said that discovering the New World was no great feat, Columbus
grabbed an egg from the table, placed it in front of everyone and asked who could stand the
egg upright. The courtiers tried in a hundred different ways but failed. Columbus took the egg and
gently cracked one end to stand it up. Everyone felt embarrassed. Only the learned King
snickered to himself. The night before, he had read in a handwritten copy of Borges’s Narratives of the Americas that Columbus once lost a bet with a chieftain and was left staring at the
natives as they lightly cracked the end of an egg and stood it on a stone table. But since fate
had ultimately delivered America into his hands, the King also began to applaud. When
Borges wrote that the King snickered to himself, he got carried away and couldn’t help but
make the chieftain and natives in his book clap their hands, too. This is why the King, when
he suddenly heard a sound and looked out the window, was also a little embarrassed.