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The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the Forerunner

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky · English · Gutenberg #47902 · 994,961 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, the Forerunner

Author: Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

Translator: Herbert Trench


        
Release date: January 10, 2015 [eBook #47902]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

The Forerunner


       *       *       *       *       *

  By DMITRI MÉREJKOWSKI

    THE DEATH OF THE GODS. Authorized English Version by HERBERT
    TRENCH. 12^o     $1.50

    THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE FORERUNNER. (The
    Resurrection of the Gods.) Authorized English Version edited by
    HERBERT TRENCH. 12^o     $1.50

    THE ANTI-CHRIST. (Peter the Great and Alexis.) Translated by
    HERBERT TRENCH. 12^o (_In Press._)

    TOLSTOI AS MAN AND ARTIST, With an Essay on Dostoievski.
    Authorized English Version.

  G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  New York     London

       *       *       *       *       *


[Illustration: LEONARDO DA VINCI

AFTER THE PORTRAIT IN THE UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE]


Christ and Anti-Christ

THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

The Forerunner

by

DIMITRI MÉREJKOWSKI

Author of "The Death of the Gods."

Exclusively Authorised Translation from the Russian of
"The Resurrection of the Gods."

By Herbert Trench







G.P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
1904




This Romance is the Second of the historical Trilogy, of which the first
volume, dealing with the times of the Emperor Julian, was the _Death of
the Gods_. The present story of the Italian Renaissance has been
published in Russia as _The Resurrection of the Gods_; in France under
the title, _The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci_. This translation is
direct from the Russian, and is the only one in the English language
which is or will be authorised by the Author.


Published, July, 1902
Reprinted, October, 1902; February, 1903; July, 1904




                                         ST. PETERSBOURG, 3, ix, 1901.

À Monsieur Herbert Trench j'accorde l'autorisation _exclusive_ de
traduire du Russe en Anglais mon livre _La Résurrection des Dieux_.

                                                   DMITRI MÉREJKOWSKI.




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE
  BOOK I
  THE WHITE SHE-DEVIL--1494                                          3

  BOOK II
  ECCE DEUS--ECCE HOMO--1494                                        36

  BOOK III
  THE POISONED FRUITS--1494                                         57

  BOOK IV
  THE WITCHES' SABBATH--1494                                        82

  BOOK V
  THY WILL BE DONE--1494                                           104

  BOOK VI
  THE DIARY OF GIOVANNI BOLTRAFFIO--1494-1495                      129

  BOOK VII
  THE BONFIRE OF VANITIES--1496                                    151

  BOOK VIII
  THE AGE OF GOLD--1496-1497                                       172

  BOOK IX
  THE SIMILITUDES--1498-1499                                       210

  BOOK X
  CALM WATERS--1499-1500                                           260

  BOOK XI
  THERE SHALL BE WINGS--1500                                       300

  BOOK XII
  'AUT CÆSAR AUT NIHIL'--1500-1503                                 320

  BOOK XIII
  THE PURPLE BEAST--1503                                           361

  BOOK XIV
  MONNA LISA GIOCONDA--1503-1506                                   385

  BOOK XV
  THE HOLY INQUISITION--1506-1513                                  411

  BOOK XVI
  LEONARDO, MICHELANGELO, AND RAPHAEL--1513-1515                   425

  BOOK XVII
  DEATH--THE WINGED PRECURSOR--1516-1519                           437

  EPILOGUE                                                         459




  LEONARDO DA VINCI


     'Sentio rediit ab inferis Julianus.'
     (I feel that Julian has risen again.)--PETRARCH.

     'We see the encounter of vast contraries: Man-god against
     God-man--Apollo Belvedere against Christ.'--DOSTOIEVSKY.




BOOK I

THE WHITE SHE-DEVIL--1494


     'At Siena was discovered another statue of Venus, to the huge joy
     of the inhabitants. A great concourse, with much feasting and
     honour, set it up over the fountain called "Il Fonte Gaja," as an
     adornment....

     'But great tribulation having come upon the land by reason of the
     Florentines, there arose one of the council, a citizen, and spake
     in this wise: "Fellow-citizens, since the finding of this figure we
     have had much evil hap, and if we consider how strictly idolatry is
     prohibited by our faith, what shall we think but that God hath sent
     us this adversity by reason of sin? I advise that we remove this
     image from the public square of the city, deface it, break it in
     pieces, and send it to be buried in the territory of the
     Florentines."

     'All agreeing with this opinion, they confirmed it by a decree; and
     the thing was put into execution, and the statue was buried within
     our confines.' (_Notes of the Florentine sculptor, Lorenzo
     Ghiberti, XVth. century._)


I

In Florence the guild of dyers had their shops hard by the Canonica of
Orsanmichele. The houses were disfigured by every sort of shed,
outhouse, and projection on crooked wooden supports; tiled roofs leaned
so close to each other as almost to shut out the sky, and the street was
dark even in the glare of noon. In the doorways below, samples of
foreign woollen-stuffs were suspended, sent to Florence to be dyed with
litmus-lichen, with madder, or with woad steeped in a corrosive of
Tuscan alum. The street was paved roughly, and in the kennel flowed
many-coloured streams, oozings from the dye vats. Shields over the
portals of the principal shops, or _Fondachi_ were blazoned with the
arms of the Calimala (so the guild of dyers was named), 'on a field
gules, an eagle or, upon a ball of wool argent.'

Within one of these _Fondachi_, among huge account-books and piles of
commercial documents, sat Messer Cipriano Buonaccorsi, a worthy
Florentine merchant, and Master of the Noble Guild of the Calimala.

It was a cold March evening, and damp exhaled from the choked and
cumbered cellars; the old man was a-cold, and he drew his worn
squirrel-mantle tightly round him. A goose-quill was stuck behind his
ear, and with omniscient, though weak and myopic eyes, that seemed at
once careless and attentive, he conned the parchment leaves of his
ponderous ledger; debit to the left, credit to the right; divided by
rectangular lines, and annotated in a round, even hand, unadorned by
stops, or capitals, or Arabic numerals, which were considered frivolous
innovations, impertinent in business-books. On the first page was
inscribed in imposing characters: 'In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the most blessed Virgin Mary, this book is begun in the year of the
Lord MCCCCLXXXXIV.'

Having corrected an error in the number of bales received in pledge, and
satisfied himself as to the latest entries of podded pepper, Mecca
ginger, and bundles of cinnamon, Messer Cipriano leaned wearily against
the back of his chair, closed his eyes, and meditated upon an epistle he
must indite for his emissary at the Wool Fair in Montpellier of France.
Just then some one entered, and the old man raising his glance saw his
_contadino_, Grillo, who rented from him certain vineyards and fields
belonging to his mountain-villa of San Gervaso in the valley of the
Mugnone. Grillo did obsequious reverence, tendering a basket of brown
eggs, carefully packed, while at his belt clucked two fat chickens,
their feet tied and their heads hanging.

'Ah, Grillo!' exclaimed Buonaccorsi, with his customary urbanity, 'has
the Lord been gracious to you? Meseems, we have the spring season at
last.'

'Messer Cipriano, to us old men even the spring brings no delight. Our
old bones ache worse than before and cry louder for the grave. I have
brought your worship eggs and young cockerels for Easter.' And he
screwed up his greenish eyes, revealing innumerable small creases all
round them, the effect of rude acquaintance with wind and sun.
Buonaccorsi, having thanked him for the gift, turned to business.

'Well, have you the men ready at the farm? Can we get all done before
day-break?'

Grillo sighed prodigiously, and meditated, leaning heavily on his
staff. 'All is ready, and there are men enough. But I ask you, Messer
Cipriano, were it not better we waited a little?'

'Nay, old man, you have said yourself that we must not wait, lest the
matter become known.'

'True. Yet the thing is terrible. It is sin. And the days now are
holy-days, days of fasting; and our work is of another sort.'

'Well, I will take the sin on my own soul. Fear naught; I will not
betray you. Only tell me--shall we find what we seek?'

'Why should we not? We have signs to guide us. Did not our fathers know
of the hill behind the mill at the Humid Hollow? And at night there's
the Jack o' Lantern over San Giovanni. That means lots of this rubbish
all round. I have heard tell that not long ago, when they were digging
in the vineyard at Marignola, they drew a whole devil from out the
clay.'

'A devil? What manner of devil?'

'A bronze one with horns. He had hairy legs--goat's legs--with hoofs.
And a face which laughs. And he dances on one leg and snaps his fingers.
'Twas very old; all green and crumbled.'

'What did they do with it?'

'They made it into a bell for the new chapel of San Michele.'

Messer Cipriano was beside himself. 'Grillo, you should have told me of
this before!'

'Your worship had gone to Siena.'

'You should have sent after me. I would have despatched some one--I
would have come myself--I would have grudged no expense--I would have
cast ten bells for them in its place. The idiots! To make a Dancing
Faun--perhaps a real Scopas--into a bell!'

'Ay, they showed their folly. But, Messer Cipriano, be not wroth. They
are punished: for since they hung that new bell the worms have eaten the
apples, and the olives have failed. And the tone of the bell is bad.'

'How so?'

'That's not for me to say. It hasn't the proper note. It brings no joy
to the Christian heart. Somehow it sounds unmeaning. 'Tis what one might
expect: one can't get a Christian bell out of a dumb devil. Be it not
spoke to anger your worship, but, Messer Cipriano, the good Father is
right; of all this filth they dig up, no good is going to come. We must
go to work with prudence and defend ourselves with the cross and with
prayers; for the Devil is subtle and powerful and the son of a dog, and
he creeps in at one ear and out at the other. We were led into
temptation even by that stone arm which Zaccheo found at the Hill of the
Mill. 'Twas the Evil One tempted us, and we came to harm by it. Lord
defend us! 'Tis dreadful even to remember!'

'How got you it, Grillo?'

'The thing happened last autumn on the Eve of Martinmas. We were sitting
us down to sup, and the good woman had put the porridge on the table,
when my nephew Zaccheo came bursting in from his digging in the field on
the Hill of the Mill. "Master! O master!" he cried, and his face was all
drawn and changed, and his teeth chattered. "The Lord be with you, my
son!" says I, and he went on: "O Lord, master! there's a corpse creeping
out from under the pots! Go yourself, master, and see." So we crossed
ourselves and we went. By this time 'twas dark, and the moon was getting
up behind the trees. There was the old olive-stump, and beside it where
the earth was dug was some shining thing. I stooped, and saw 'twas an
arm, very white, and with round dainty fingers, like those of the city
ladies. "Good Lord," thinks I, "what sort of devilment is this?" I let
down the lantern into the hole, and that arm moved and signalled to me
with its finger! That was more than I could bear, and I cried out, and
my knees bent under me. But Monna Bonda, my grandame, whom they call a
wise woman, and who has all her life in her though she be so old, chided
me, saying, "Fool, what is it you fear? Do not your eyes tell you yon
thing is neither of the living nor of the dead, but is a stone?" And she
snatched at it and pulled it forth out of the earth. "Nay, grandame," I
bade her, "let it be; touch it not; rather let me bury it lest mischief
befall us." "Not so," quoth she; "but take we it to the church, and let
the Father exorcise it." But she deceived me, for she brought it not to
the priest, but hid it in the chimney-corner, where in her cot she keeps
gear of all sorts--rags, unguents, and herbals, and spells. And when I
made insistence, she insisted too and kept it. And from that day 'tis
very certain the old beldame hath done cures of great marvel. Is it a
toothache? she doth but touch the cheek with the idol and the swelling
is gone. She salves fevers, colics, falling sickness. If a cow is in
labour and cannot bring forth, Monna Bonda touches her with that same
stone hand, and the cow lows, and there's the calf, kicking in the
straw. The noise of these wonders has gone abroad, and the old woman has
swelled her money-chest. But no good has come of it, for Don Faustino
has not allowed me one day's peace. He speaks against me in his
preaching, in church before them all. He calls me the son of perdition
and the child of the Devil, and he declares he will tell of it to the
bishop, and will deny me the Communion. The boys run after me in the
street, and point and say, "There goes Grillo, the sorcerer, and his
grandame is a witch, and they have sold themselves to the Evil One."
Even in the night I get no rest. Meseems that stone hand rises up and
lies softly on my neck, and then of a sudden takes me by the throat and
would strangle me, till I essay to cry out, and cannot. "Bad jesting,
this," I think to myself. So at last one morning, ere it was light, the
old woman having gone forth to pick her herbs, I got up and broke open
her cot, and found the thing, and brought it to you. Lotto, the
rag-picker, would have given me ten _soldi_ for it, and of you I only
had eight; but I am ready to sacrifice not only two _soldi_, but even my
life for your worship. May the Lord give you His holy benediction, and
to Madonna Angelica, and to your sons and your grandsons!'

'It seems, then, by what you tell me, Grillo,' said Messer Cipriano
thoughtfully, 'that we shall have findings on that Hill of the Mill?'

'We are like enough to find,' said the old man with a profound sigh;
'only we may not tell Don Faustino. If he hear of it he will dress my
head without a comb; and he can do your worship a mischief, too, for he
can raise the people and not let you finish your work. Well, well--we
must pray the Lord to show us mercy! But in the meanwhile, my honoured
benefactor, do not abandon me, but say a word for me to the judge.'

'What? anent the strip of land the miller would take from you?'

'That is it, master. The miller is a cunning rascal, and he knows how
to catch the devil by the tail. I, you see, gave a heifer to the judge;
but the miller gave him a lined cow. I fear me the judge will decide for
the miller, because the suit is not yet concluded, and already the cow
has a fine bull-calf. I pr'ythee, speak for me--father that you are to
me. This which we do on the Hill of the Mill, I do only for your
kindness. There is no other I would have let bring such a sin upon my
conscience.'

'Be at ease, Grillo. I will speak for you; the judge is my friend. Now
take your steps to the kitchen, and eat and drink. To-night we will go
together to San Gervaso.'

The old man, with many reverences, went out, and Messer Cipriano betook
himself to his little chamber near the storehouse. It was a museum of
marbles and bronzes, hung on walls, arranged on benches. Medals and old
coins were assorted on cloth-covered benches; and fragments of statues,
not yet pieced together, were waiting in huge cases. Through his
trade-agents in many countries he procured antiquities from all classic
grounds; from Athens, Smyrna, Halicarnassus, Cyprus, Leucosia, Rhodes,
from the remoter Egypt, from the heart of the Levant. The Master of the
Guild of the Calimala glanced over his treasures, and then sank into
profound consideration of customs-dues on the import of fleeces; and
finally composed the letter to his factor at the Wool Fair in
Montpellier.


II

Meantime, in the hinder-part of the warehouse, heaped with bales, and
lighted only by the glimmer of a lamp before the image of the Madonna,
three lads, Dolfo, Antonio, and Giovanni were gossiping together. Dolfo,
Messer Buonaccorsi's clerk, a red-haired, snub-nosed, good-natured
youth, was entering the number of ells of cloth which Antonio da Vinci,
old for his years, with glassy eyes and thin, rough, black locks, was
rapidly measuring with the Florentine measure, called a _canna_:
Giovanni Boltraffio, a student of painting from Milan, a big boy of
nineteen, but shy and awkward, with innocent, sad, grey eyes, and an
irresolute expression, was sitting cross-legged on a made-up bale, and
listening with all his ears.

'This is what we have come to,' cried Antonio excitedly; 'digging
heathen gods out of the ground!' Then he added, dictating to Dolfo, 'of
brown Scotch faced-cloth, 32 _braccia_,[1] 6 fingers, 8 nails.' Then,
having folded the measured piece, he threw it into its place, and
raising his finger with the gesture of a menacing prophet, in imitation
of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, he cried, '_Gladius Dei super terram cito et
velociter!_ In the island of Patmos San Giovanni had a vision: he saw
the angel lay hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil,
and bind him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and
shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations
no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled. To-day Satan has
been released from his prison; to-day the thousand years are at an end;
the false gods, forerunners and followers of Antichrist, are creeping
forth from under the seal of the angel back into the world for the
temptation of men! Woe to those who live on the earth or on the sea!--Of
thin, yellow, Brabant cloth, 17 _braccia_, 4 fingers, 9 nails!'

  [1] _Braccio_, a measure considerably less than a metre, still in use
      in Florence.

'How think you, then, Antonio?' asked Giovanni, with alarmed and eager
interest; 'all these signs bear witness----'

'Ay, ay! You see, the hour has come. Not alone are they digging up the
old gods, but they are creating new ones in their likeness. Painters and
sculptors alike weary themselves in the service of Moloch--that is, the
Devil. They turn the House of God into the temple of Satan; in the
sacred pictures, under the guise of martyrs and saints, they paint the
gods of uncleanness, and to these the people pray; in place of John the
Baptist they give us Bacchus; for the holy Mother of God we get the
shameless Venus. The pictures should be burned with fire, and their
ashes strewn upon the wind!'

Suppressed fire flashed from the dull, dark eyes of the zealous clerk;
and Giovanni, not daring a retort, held his peace. His delicate,
childlike eyebrows contracted under the stress of thought. At last,
however, he said: 'Antonio, they tell me Messer Leonardo, your kinsman,
takes scholars into his painting-room. I have long wished----'

Antonio frowned and interrupted him. 'If you would lose your soul,
Giovanni, then go to Messer Leonardo!'

'What? Why?'

'Though he be my near kinsman, and though he have lived twenty years
longer than I, nevertheless in the Scripture it is written: "From an
heretic, after the first and second admonition, turn thou away."
Leonardo is a heretic and an infidel. His mind is darkened by Satanic
pride; he seeks to penetrate into the mysteries of nature by steeping
himself in mathematics and black magic.' Then, raising his eyes to
heaven, he repeated from Savonarola's latest discourse: '"The wisdom of
this world is foolishness with God. We know them, these learned men;
they all go to the house of the devil."'

'And have you heard, Antonio,' persisted Giovanni, still shyly, 'that
Messer Leonardo is here in Florence? He has even now arrived from
Milan.'

'For what purpose?'

'The duke has sent him to buy, if possible, pictures from the galleries
of the late Lorenzo the Magnificent.'

'Well, if he be here, then here he is. 'Tis of no moment to me,' said
Antonio, turning away; and he proceeded to measure a length of green
cloth with his _canna_.

From the church, bells rang out the call to vespers, and Dolfo stretched
himself and clapped-to the ledger with an air of relief; for this day
work was over, and the shops and the warehouses were shutting.

Giovanni stepped into the street. A narrow strip of grey sky, faintly
tinged with the roseate of evening, showed between the humid roofs: a
fine rain fell through the windless air. Suddenly from a window in a
neighbouring alley was wafted a song:--

     'O vaghe montanine pastorelle
     Donde venite si leggiadre e belle?'

     (O shepherd-girls so fair,
     Say from what mountain air
       Light-footed have ye strayed?)

The voice was resonant and young: from the measured beat of the treadle
Giovanni guessed at a loom, and at a girl singing as she threw the
shuttle. He listened with vague enjoyment, and remembered that the
spring had come, and felt his heart swelling with strange emotions of
tenderness and melancholy.

'Nanna! Nanna! Where hast thou got to, thou little devil? What hath
happened to thine ears? Haste thee! The vermicelli grows cold.' After
which there was a swift clapping of wooden pattens across the floor, and
then silence.

Giovanni stood long, his eyes on the window, the gay song echoing in his
ears like the far-off beatings of some shepherd's pipe--

     'O vaghe montanine pastorelle----'

Then sighing softly to himself he entered the house of the Master of the
Calimala, and mounting the winding stair, with its worm-eaten banisters,
he presented himself in the great room, which served as a library, and
in which, bending over a desk, was Giorgio Merula, the historiographer
of the Court of the Duke of Milan.


III

Merula had come to Florence on a mission from his lord, to purchase rare
books from the library of the great Lorenzo. He was lodged in the house
of Buonaccorsi, as great an enthusiast as himself for the learning and
the arts of the ancients. Journeying to Florence he had fallen into an
acquaintance with Giovanni Boltraffio at a road-side inn, and under the
pretext that he required an amanuensis, he had brought him in his
company to Messer Cipriano's house.

When Boltraffio entered, Merula was in the act of examining with
reverent attention a much-worn volume, which had the appearance of a
Missal or a Psaltery. He gingerly passed a damp sponge over the
parchment--parchment of the most delicate kind, made from the skin of a
still-born lamb; here and there he rubbed it with pumice-stone, smoothed
it with the blade of a knife and with a polisher; then holding it up to
the light, studied it afresh.

'Dainty darlings!' he murmured, sucking in his lips with delight; 'come
forth to the light of heaven! Ah, how many and how beautiful ye are!'

He raised his bald head from his work and showed a bloated, red-nosed
countenance, mobile brows, and eyes small and colourless, but brimming
with vivacity; poured wine into a cup beside him on the window-sill,
drank it, coughed, and was returning to his work when he caught sight of
Giovanni.

'Ha, little monk!' he called out merrily. 'You have been lacking to me:
"Where can my little monk be gone?" quoth I. "Fallen in love, of a
surety, with one of the fair maids of Florence." Fair enough, I warrant
you, and falling in love is no sin. Nor have I been wasting my time
neither. You never have seen such a pretty piece in your life. Will you
have me show her to you? Not I; for you'll be whispering the thing to
the four winds! And to think I bought her for a song from a Hebrew
rag-vendor! Well, well, I suppose I must show you; you only!' And
beckoning mysteriously he whispered, 'Come here with you--closer--here!'

And he pointed to a page closely covered with the angular characters of
ecclesiastical writing: praises of the Virgin, psalms, prayers,
interspersed with huge musical notation. Then he opened the book at
another page, and raised it to the light on a level with Giovanni's
eyes; the boy noticed that where Merula had scraped away the
ecclesiastical writing there emerged other characters--barely
distinguishable--not letters, but the ghosts of letters, pallid,
attenuated, faint, still lingering impressed upon the parchment.

'See you? See you?' cried Merula, triumphantly; 'is it not a darling?
Did I not tell you, little brother, 'twas a pretty piece!'

'But what is it?' asked Giovanni, astounded.

'That's what I can't yet tell you. Fragments of an antique anthology;
new riches it may be of the Hellenic muse. And, perchance, but for me
they would never have come out into God's light--would have been
entombed to the end of time under antiphons and psalms of penitence!'
And Merula explained to his pupil how some Middle Age, monkish copyist,
wishing to use the precious parchment, had expunged, as he thought, the
old Pagan writing, and scrawled his pieties over it. As the old man
spoke, the sun filled the room with its slowly dying, evening red; in
this last radiance the shade of the antique letters, the ghost of the
ancient writing, showed itself with redoubled clearness.

'You see! you see!' cried Merula in an ecstasy, 'The dead are rising
from their age-long sepulchres! It is a hymn to the Olympian gods!
Already you can decipher the first lines!'

And translating from the Greek, he read:--

     'Glory to the gentle, the richly-crowned Dionysus,
      Glory to thee, far-darting Phoebus, silver-bowed, terrible,
      God of the flowing curls, slayer of the sons of Niobe----'

And here is a hymn to that Venus, of whom you, little monk, have such a
mighty dread:--

     'Glory to thee, golden-limbed mother, Aphrodite,
      Delight of the gods and of mortals.'

But here the verses broke off, hidden under the pious over-writing.
Giovanni lowered the book, and at once the traces of the old Greek
letters grew faint and confused, sinking into the yellow smoothness of
the parchment. Nothing was visible but the clear, black, greasy
characters of the monkish scribe, the penitential psalm, and the huge
square notes for the chant:--

     'Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not thyself from my
     supplication. My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of
     death are fallen upon me.'

The roseate reflection faded away, and darkness filled the room. Merula
poured wine from the earthen pitcher, drank, and offered it to his
companion.

'To my health, boy. _Vinum super omnia bonum diligamus!_ You refuse?
Well, well! as you will. I will drink for you. But what is ill with you,
little monk? You are as green as if you were drowning. Has that bigot of
an Antonio been scaring you with his prophesyings? Spit on them,
Giovanni, spit on them! A pox upon all these croakings of ill-voiced
ravens! Confess now, you have been with Antonio?'

'Ay.'

'And of what did he speak?'

'Of Antichrist, and of Messer Leonardo da Vinci.'

'So I thought! You have no speech but of Leonardo! Has he bewitched you,
simpleton? Hear me now, lad; remove that folly out of your head, and
content you as my secretary. I will show you the world; teach you
grammar, law; make you an orator and a court poet. There's the road to
riches and fame. Painting! what rubbish is that? Seneca called it a
trade--no business for a free man. Turn your eyes upon the artists; are
they not all ignorant, rude persons----'

'Nay, I have been told Messer Leonardo is a great scholar.'

'You tell me news. Where is his Latin, pr'ythee? He confounds Cicero and
Quintilian, and has not even a smack of Greek about him. A scholar you
call him, do you?'

'But,' urged Boltraffio, 'he has made wondrous machines; and his studies
of the phenomena of nature----'

'Machines! pf--f! Studies of nature! How far is that going to take you?
In my _Elegantiæ Linguæ Latinæ_ I have culled more than two thousand
turns of speech; on my soul, new, and elegance itself. Would you know
how much it cost me? But to apply wheels to machinery, and to watch the
manner of the flying of birds and the sprouting of the grass in the
fields--call you that learning? 'Tis the idleness, the vain toying of
babes.'

The old man paused: his face had grown stern. Then taking his young
friend by the arm, he continued with gravity:--

'Hearken, Giovanni; and what I say to you burn it deep into your mind.
Our teachers are the Greeks and the Romans; they have done all that the
mind of man can do upon this earth. For us there is nothing left but to
follow in their footsteps: is it not written, "The disciple is not
greater than his lord?"' He lifted his wine, and looking straight into
Giovanni's eyes with malicious mirth, all his lines and wrinkles
dissolving in one broad smile, he added:--

'O youth! youth! I look upon you, little monk, and I envy you. You are a
bud blowing in the spring, that is what you are. And you, simpleton,
contemn women, and scorn wine, and would make of yourself a hermit and a
recluse. For all that, you have a little devil there in your heart; oh,
I read you well enough, my friend, through and through to your very
soul! Some day that little devil will peep out; it is vain for you to
deny it. However glum you may be, there are those who will be merry in
your company. See, Giovanni, _carino_ you're this parchment--penitential
psalms outside, and under them a hymn to Aphrodite!'

'Messer Giorgio,' said Giovanni, 'it grows dark; were it not well I
brought the lights?'

'Why this haste, lad? It pleases me to converse in the twilight, and to
recall my lost youth.' His tongue had grown stammering and his phrases
less perspicuous. 'I know,' he muttered, 'that you are gazing at me, and
thinking, "He is drunk, the old rascal, and talking his folly." Yet I
have that here within me,' and he tapped his bald forehead complacently
and nodded. 'I speak not for boasting,' he went on, 'but inquire of the
scholars whether any have ever surpassed Merula in the elegance of his
Latin. Who was it who discovered Martial? Who read the famed inscription
on the gate of Tibur? That meant climbing till your head reeled, stones
breaking from under your feet, as you clung to a bunch of twigs and
thought to fall headlong. Whole days under the blazing sun, just to read
and to copy those few ancient letters! And the peasant maids as they
passed would cry to each other, "See yon fat quail up there seeking a
nesting place!" And I would answer them with some gallantry, and when
they had passed by would set me to my work again. Once, concealed under
the ivy and the thorns, where the stones had fallen in ruin, I found
these two sole words, "_Gloria Romanorum!_"' And as if listening to the
echo of majestic utterance too long silenced, Merula repeated in low,
awestruck tones, '"_Gloria Romanorum!_"'--Glory of the Romans!'

But then, with an uncertain wave of the hand, he added, 'By my troth!
'tis something to remember, even though the past returns no more.' And
raising his glass, he sang hoarsely the students' drinking-song:--

     'Not a single jot miss I,
      Not a single drop, Sir!
      All my life to the cask I go,
      And by the cask I'll stop, Sir.
      Wine I love and singing to 't,
      And the Latin Graces;
      If I drink my throat'll do 't
      Better than Horatius.
      Vintage spins our brains about
      _Dum vinum potamus_;
      Lads, to Bacchus let us shout,
      _Te Deum laudamus!_'

He fell a-coughing and was unable to finish. By this time it was dark,
and Giovanni could barely see his master's face. Outside it was still
raining, and the swollen and frequent drops plashed noisily in the
streaming courtyard below.

'Hear me, little monk,' stuttered Merula; 'what was it I was saying? My
wife is a handsome woman--no--that wasn't it. Have patience. Yes, I have
it now. You know the line: "_Tu regere imperio populos, Romane,
memento_." Ah! they were the giants, the lords of the universe!' Here
his voice shook, and Giovanni saw tears in his eyes. 'I repeat, giants.
While to-day--it is a scandal to speak it! but let us take this duke of
ours, Ludovico Il Moro, Duke of Milan. True it is I am paid by him, am
writing his history, am a sort of Titus Livius, and am comparing the
cowardly hare, the man of straw, to Pompey and to Cæsar; but in my soul,
Giovanni, in my soul'--He stopped, and glanced at the door with the
suspiciousness of a practised courtier; then bending closer to his
companion, he whispered, 'In the soul of old Merula the love of liberty
is not dead, and will never die. Repeat it not, but I tell you our times
are evil, evil as never before. And the men! it sickens me to see them;
rotten! mere clods of earth! And they curl up their noses, and think
themselves as the ancients. I would fain know what they are so proud of.
Hearken; an acquaintance of mine writes to me from Greece, that not many
weeks ago in the island of Chios, the convent washer-women as they were
beating the linen at dawn, found on the seashore--a god! a real ancient
god; a Triton with his fishy-tail, and fins, and scales. The silly fools
were affrighted and fled, thinking it the Devil. But when they saw him
weak and old, and it would seem sick, lying on his belly on the sand,
and warming his green scales in the sun, his hair grey, and his eyes dim
as those of a sucking babe, then they took courage, the cowardly
wretches! and came around him showering him with Christian prayers, and
beat him to death like a dog; he, the ancient deity, last of the mighty
gods of the ocean; it might be a scion of Poseidon himself!'

And the old man shook his head sorrowfully, and maudlin tears rolled
down his cheeks as he thought of the sea-monster done to death by
Christian laundresses. A servant entered bearing a candle, and closed
the shutters; with the darkness the pagan phantoms shrank away and
vanished. The pair were called to supper, but Merula was so heavy with
wine that they had to carry him to bed.

It was long before Boltraffio slept, and as he listened to the peaceful
snores of Messer Giorgio, he thought, as usual, of Leonardo da Vinci.


IV

Giovanni had been sent to Florence by his uncle, Oswald Ingrim, the
painter on glass (_magister a vitreis_), a German from Grätz, and pupil
of Johann Kirchheim, the famous Strasburg master. He was to buy certain
transparent and brilliant pigments which could be obtained only in the
Tuscan city, and were required by Ingrim for his work in Milan
Cathedral. The boy was the natural son of Reinold the lapidary, Oswald's
brother, and had got the name of Boltraffio from his Lombard mother,
whom Oswald asserted to be a shameless woman and the cause of his
brother's ruin. Brought up by his crabbed uncle, Giovanni was a lonely
and frightened child, reared on tales of unclean powers, demons, hags,
sorcerers, and were-wolves. His special horror was a certain demon
which, according to the North Italian tradition, appeared under the form
of a woman, and was called the 'White She-devil,' or the 'Mother of the
Snowy Eyebrow.' Yet even in his earliest infancy, when his uncle would
silence his sobs with threats of the _Diavolessa bianca_, the child felt
a curiosity mingling with his terror, a shrinking wish that some day he
might meet the white one face to face, and behold her countenance with
his own eyes.

When the boy was grown, Ingrim handed him over as pupil to Fra Benedetto
the sacred painter. This was a kind and simple-minded old man, who
taught that the first step in beginning a picture was to invoke God
Omnipotent and the beloved Virgin, St. Luke the first Christian painter,
and all the saints in Paradise; the second to put on the cloak of
charity, fear, patience, and obedience; the last, to temper his colours
with yelk of egg, and the juice from young fig-branches mixed with wine,
and to prepare his panels of old beechwood by rubbing them with the
ashes of bones--if possible the wing bones of capons. His precepts were
endless and minute: Giovanni soon learned the contemptuous phrase with
which he dismissed the colour known as Dragon's Blood. 'Let it lie;
'twill bring you no credit,' and Giovanni surmised that the same words
had been said by Fra Benedetto's teacher, and by the teacher of his
teacher before him. Constant was the smile of quiet pride with which
Benedetto initiated his pupil into the secrets of his art. For instance,
in the painting of youthful faces the eggs of urban hens were essential:
the rural hen laying an egg with a ruddy yelk only suited for the
delineation of countenances wrinkled and swarthy. Notwithstanding these
subtleties, Fra Benedetto was a painter simple and innocent as a child:
he prepared himself for work by fast and vigil; each time he depicted
the Crucifixion his face was bathed in tears.

Giovanni loved his master, and had considered him the first of painters;
this opinion had however been shaken of late. Fra Benedetto, expounding
his one anatomical rule, viz., that the length of a man's body must be
reckoned at eight faces and two-thirds, was used to add in the same
perfunctory tone in which he spoke of Dragon's Blood: 'As for the bodies
of women, we will not allude to them, for they have no proportions.'
This dogma was as much an article of faith with him as these others:
that all fish are dark-coloured above and bright below; or that men's
ribs are fewer than women's by reason of God's method in the creation of
Eve. For an allegorical representation of the elements, he drew a mole
to signify earth; a fish, water; a salamander, fire; a chameleon, air;
but, supposing the word 'chameleon' an augmentative of 'camel,' the
simple monk showed the fluid element as a colossal camel, its jaws
gaping alarmingly in its efforts to breathe. Nor were his remaining
notions more accurate. Doubts therefore crept into Giovanni's mind, and
a mutinous spirit, which Fra Benedetto called 'the devil of worldly
knowledge.' When, shortly before his journey to Florence, the lad
chanced to see certain drawings of Leonardo da Vinci's, his doubts grew
with such rapidity that he was no longer able to stifle them.

To-night, here in the Tuscan city, as he lay beside the
peacefully-snoring Messer Giorgio, he turned all this over in his mind
for the thousandth time; but the more he thought the more puzzled he
became. Then he resolved to invoke celestial aid, and full of hope,
raising his eyes to the impenetrable darkness of night, he prayed
thus:--

'Lord, help me and forsake me not. If Messer Leonardo be truly a godless
man, in whose skill lieth temptation and sin, rid me of the thought of
him; purge my mind of the memory of his drawings, and deliver me from
evil. But if, while pleasing Thee and glorifying Thy name in the noble
art of painting, it be yet possible to know all which is hidden from Fra
Benedetto, and which I am so fain to learn (such as anatomy,
perspective, and the laws of light and shade), then, O God, make strong
my will, and lighten my eyes, that I may doubt no more; and permit that
Messer Leonardo may receive me into his studio, and that Fra Benedetto
may grant me his pardon, and may know that I am in nowise guilty in Thy
sight.'

After this fervent prayer, Giovanni felt a balsam descend upon his
heart: little by little confusion came upon his thoughts; he fancied
himself back with his uncle, the glass-worker, and listening to the
hissing of the glass as the white-hot steel was plunged into it. He saw
the twisting of the leaden ribbons, which form the frames for the
several pieces of coloured glass: he heard the voice of Oswald
commanding more notches at the edge of the lead for the fixing of the
glass; then all vanished: he rolled to his other side and slept.

And a vision came to him, which in after years he often recalled to
mind. For he saw himself standing in the gloom of a vast cathedral, and
before a many-coloured, Gothic window. On it was depicted the vintage of
that mystic vine whereof the Saviour had said, 'My Father is the
husbandman.' The naked body of the Crucified lay in the winepress, blood
flowing from His wounds. Popes, cardinals, emperors were receiving it
into vats and casks. The Apostles were throwing in grapes; St. Peter was
treading them. In the background, prophets and patriarchs were trenching
the vineyard and pruning the vines. A waggon was passing, drawn by the
lion, the bull, and the eagle, driven by St. Matthew.

Such painted allegories Giovanni had seen in his uncle's workshop;
nowhere such colours, dark, yet with the gleam of jewels. Chiefly he
marvelled at the crimson of the Saviour's blood. From the depths of the
cathedral came the faint echoing of his favourite chant:--

     'O fior di castitate,
      Odorifero giglio
      Con gran suavitate
      Sei di color vermiglio.'

But the song died away, the window glowed no longer, and the harsh voice
of Antonio da Vinci shouted in his ear:--

'Flee! Flee for your life! _She_ cometh!'

Nor did he need to inquire who, for he knew the _Diavolessa bianca_ was
behind him. A waft of icy air; and then a heavy hand, not human, had
taken hold at his throat, and was choking him. He seemed to be dying,
cried out, and awoke--to see Messer Giorgio standing by his side and
dragging away the coverlet.

'Eh! pull yourself from your bed or they will depart without us. Arise!
the hour is already past,' cried the antiquarian.

'What! Whither?' stammered Giovanni, half-asleep.

'Whither? Can you forget? To the villa of San Gervaso, to dig at the
Hill of the Mill.'

'I go not thither.'

'You go not? What have I waked you for? Why have I bidden them saddle
the black mule that the two of us may travel at ease? A truce to this
stubbornness. Get up! Get up! Nay, then, a word in your ear, Giovannino:
Messer Leonardo will be there.'

Giovanni leaped to his feet, and without another word threw on his
clothes.

Presently they were in the courtyard, where all was ready for the start.
Grillo was running hither and thither advising and directing. At last
they set out. Other friends of Cipriano's, and among them Leonardo da
Vinci, were to meet them later, by another path to San Gervaso.


V

The rain was over, and the north wind had banished the clouds. Stars
scintillated in the moonless heaven, like little wind-blown lamps.
Resin-torches flared and fluttered, scattering sparks. The horsemen took
their way by the Via Ricasoli, past San Marco and the serrated gate of
San Gallo. Here the sentinels argued and swore, but were too sleepy to
perceive what was on foot; and presently egress was secured by a good
bribe. Outside the gate, the road followed the deep and narrow valley of
the Mugnone. After passing several meagre villages, where the streets
were even narrower than those in Florence, and the rough stone houses
were as tall as fortresses, the party emerged into an olive-grove owned
by the _contadini_ of San Gervaso. Dismounting at the junction of two
roads, they walked to the Hill of the Mill, hard by Messer Cipriano's
vineyard. Here men awaited them with spades and mattocks; and here,
behind the hill, beyond the marsh known as the Humid Hollow, the villa
walls showed shadowy white through the darkness of the trees. Tall
cypresses stood up black from the summit of the hill, and down below on
the Mugnone was the name-giving watermill.

Grillo signified where, to his thinking, they ought to dig; Merula
suggested another place; and Strocco, the gardener, swore they must go
lower down, much nearer to the Humid Hollow, because the devils always
hide themselves nearest to the slough. Cipriano, however, bade dig where
Grillo advised; the spades grated, and soon there was an odour of
new-dug earth. Giovanni shuddered, for a bat had brushed his face with
its weird pinions; but Merula clapped him on the shoulder, crying, 'Fear
nothing, little monk! we shall find no devil here. This Grillo is an
ass. Thank heaven, it's not the sort of excavation I'm used to. At Rome,
in the 45th Olympiad' (Merula scorned the Christian calendar), 'in the
days of Pope Innocent VIII., diggers from Lombardy, who were working on
the Appian Way close to the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, found an ancient
sarcophagus with the inscription, "Julia, daughter of Claudius," and in
it a body clothed in wax--a fair maid of fifteen, with the semblance of
one asleep. You would have sworn she breathed: the flush of life was on
her cheek. Multitudes flocked to the tomb and refused to leave it; for
such was Julia's beauty, as to be incredible to those who had not beheld
it. But it ill-suited the Pope that his children should adore a dead
heathen, and he caused the body to be interred secretly under the
Pincian Hill. Do you take me, lad? That was something like excavating!'

And Merula contemptuously kicked the clods which the diggers were
throwing up at his feet. Suddenly all the onlookers started, for a
jarring sound had come from one of the spades.

'Bones!' said the gardener; 'the ancient burying-place was here.'

At this moment the long-drawn howl of a dog was heard from San Gervaso,
and Giovanni thought, 'We are profaning a grave. May it prove nothing
worse!'

'Bones of a horse!' cried Strocco contemptuously, and dragged out a
mouldered, long-shaped skull.

'Grillo,' said Messer Cipriano anxiously, 'were it not better we tried
elsewhere?'

'Did I not say so?' cried Merula; and taking two of the workmen with him
he began new operations at the base of the hill. Strocco also had
detached a party to dig in the Humid Hollow.

Presently excited shouts were heard from Messer Giorgio.

'Hither all ye simpletons! Did not I know where ye should dig?'

All ran to his side; but again the treasure proved naught; the great
man's marble fragment was only an ordinary stone. They had all deserted
Grillo, who, openly humiliated, was digging alone by the light of a
broken lantern.

The wind had fallen and the air grew warmer: out of the Humid Hollow
exhaled a mist. The breath of primroses and violets mingled with the
dankness of stagnant water. Dawn was in the sky, and the cocks crowed
for the second time, signal of the departing of night.

Suddenly from the depths of the pit in which Grillo was concealed there
arose a despairing yell.

'Help! Help! I am falling! The ground has given way!'

His lantern was extinguished, and at first nothing could be seen. He was
heard struggling and panting, groaning and moaning. Lights were fetched,
and disclosed the roof of a subterranean vault broken through by
Grillo's weight. Two lads crept into the hole.

'Eh, Grillo! Where are you? Give us your hand! or are you buried alive,
poor fool?'

But Grillo seemed to have lost his voice. Heedless of a sprained arm, he
dragged himself along, kicking and struggling most strangely. At last he
burst into an ecstasy:--

'An idol! An idol! Hasten, Messer Cipriano! 'tis a magnificent idol!'

'Idiot,' said Strocco, 'you have got the head of another horse.'

'I tell you, No! There is but a hand missing. The rest is perfect--feet,
head, shoulders!' shouted Grillo beside himself.

Then the labourers descended into the pit, carefully turning over the
brickwork ruins. Giovanni, stretched on the ground, looked down into the
vault, from which came the chill of a grave, and the mouldy breath of
long-covered damp.

Messer Cipriano bade the men stand aside, and Giovanni could see in the
profundity between the walls of ancient red brick, a white and naked
body which lay like a corpse upon a bier, yet in the flaring of the
torchlight seemed rosy and warm with life.

'Venus!' cried Messer Giorgio: 'As I live, the Venus of Praxiteles! I
cry you honour, friend Cipriano! Not the dukedoms of Milan or Genoa
could bring you greater felicity!'

As for Grillo, they dug him out; and though his face was clotted with
blood, and his arm had swelled into uselessness, in his old eyes shone
the pride of a conqueror.

'Grillo! friend! beloved! benefactor! And I scorned you for a fool: and
you--you are the cleverest of men!' cried Messer Giorgio, and falling
into his arms he kissed him with deep emotion.

'Once,' he continued garrulously, 'Filippo Brunelleschi found a Hermes
in just such a vault under his own house. Doubtless the pagans, knowing
the value of these statues, hid them from the fury of the Christians,
who were exterminating the old worship.'

Grillo listened, smiling beatifically, inattentive to the pipe of the
shepherd and the bleating of sheep. He saw not that the sky shone now
with a white and watery brilliance, nor knew that from Florence the
belfries were exchanging their morning salutation.

'Gently! gently! To the right there! So! Keep it out from the wall!'
cried Messer Cipriano. 'Five silver pieces to each, if you can get it
out without breakage.'

By this time the stars had all disappeared with the exception of the orb
of Venus, which still sparkled like a diamond in the glow of day. And
slowly, slowly, with her ineffable smile, the goddess herself arose--as
once she had risen from the foam of the sea, so now she ascended from
her millennial tomb in the darkness of the earth:--

     'Glory to thee, golden-limbed Aphrodite,
      Delight of the gods and of mortals ...'

declaimed Merula.

But Giovanni saw her face blanched in the illumination of the white
sunlight; and himself paling with terror, the boy murmured, '_La
Diavolessa bianca!_'

He rose up and would have fled; but wonder overcame his fear. Not though
he had known himself guilty of the mortal sin which is punished with
eternal fire, could he have torn his gaze from that chaste and naked
body, from that countenance flaming with the effulgence of beauty. Never
in the days when Aphrodite was queen of the world had any worshipped her
with devouter trembling.


VI

Suddenly from the little church of San Gervaso the bells rang out, and
the whole company turned and involuntarily paused in their work, for in
the morning stillness the sound seemed irate and menacing.

'Lord have mercy on our souls!' murmured Grillo, putting his hand to his
head with a despairing gesture. 'Here is Don Faustino, and a multitude
with him! They have seen us! Look how they beat their hands and beckon.
See, they rush upon us! I am a lost man!'

At this moment arrived those friends of Messer Cipriano's, who had
intended to have been present for the excavation, but who had lost their
way. Boltraffio threw a glance at them, and, absorbed though he still
was in the new-found goddess, his attention was caught on the instant by
one of the newcomers. This personage was already inspecting the Venus,
with a cold, imperturbable composure, so different from Giovanni's
personal agitation, that the lad could not but be struck with
astonishment. He continued to gaze at the statue, but his consciousness
now was entirely for the man by his side.

'Hearken!' said Messer Cipriano after a few moments' thought, 'the villa
is not two paces distant, and the doors are strong enough for a siege.'

'Yea, verily,' cried Grillo; 'courage, brothers, we shall save her!' He
felt jealous for the image which had cost him so much, and directing the
operations himself, he contrived to get it safely transported across the
Humid Hollow. Then the statue was borne into the house; but scarcely had
it crossed the threshold, when on the hill-top appeared the threatening
figure, inflamed countenance and brandished arms of Don Faustino.

The lower part of the villa was at present uninhabited, and its great
hall was used as a storehouse for agricultural implements and great jars
of olive-oil: in one corner was a mountain of golden straw. Upon this
straw, a humble, rustic bed, Aphrodite was delicately laid to rest. But
this was no sooner accomplished and the doors barred than the latter
were assailed by blows, by shouts, and by curses loud and deep.

'Open! Open!' cried the cracked voice of Don Faustino; 'in the name of
the true and living God, I bid you open!'

Messer Cipriano mounted the stone inner staircase and surveyed the crowd
from a grated window above the hall. Seeing that the assailants were
few, he entered into parley, his face wearing his customary smile. But
the priest put his fingers in his ears, and vociferously demanded the
idol--so he named it--which had been dug out of the ground.

The Master of the Calimala now had recourse to a _ruse de guerre_.

'Beware,' he said calmly; 'I have summoned the captain of the town
guard, and in two hours the horsemen will be on you. I allow none to
enter my house by force.'

'Break down the door,' cried the priest. 'God is with us. Fear nothing!
Assault!' And snatching an axe from a gentle-faced old peasant beside
him, he battered upon the great door with all his strength.

'Don Faustino! Don Faustino!' cried the old man, feebly restraining the
furious ecclesiastic, 'we are poor folk, and we do not dig up money in
our fields. This will be our ruin; they will have us to prison!'

The mention of the redoubtable town guard had struck terror into the
rabble; and many were already deserting.

'If it had been on the church-ground, 'twere another matter,' muttered
some of them.

'The confines established by law----'

'The law? A spider's web, set to catch flies, not hornets. The law does
not exist for great folk.'

'True for you. And every man is master on his own land.'

All this time Giovanni was gazing at the rescued Venus.

The sunshine pouring through a side window seemed waking the tender body
to warmth and softness after its long imprisonment in the gloom and the
chill of the vault; the golden straw surrounding it shone like an
aureole.

Giovanni once more noted the stranger. He was on his knees beside the
statue, measuring it with his compasses, his square, and a half-circle
made of copper; on his face was the same imperturbable calm; in his
cold, blue eyes the same piercing curiosity.

'What is he doing? Who is he?' Giovanni asked himself, almost awestruck,
as he watched the quick, bold fingers exploring the limbs of the
goddess, the secrets of her beauty, all the subtleties of the marble,
too delicate for the apprehension of the eye.

At the gate of the villa the priest was still heard yelling at the
melting crowd.

'Stay, rascals! Sellers of Christ! fearful of the town guard, but
careless of Antichrist! _Ipse vero Antichristus opes malorum effodiet et
exponet_, as said the great preacher St. Anselm of Canterbury.
_Effodiet_, hear you? Antichrist shall dig up the old idols from the
earth and again bring them forth to the world.'

But none heeded him.

'He is a pestilent fellow, this Don Faustino of ours!' said the prudent
miller shaking his head; 'his life hangs by a thread, yet see how he
storms. For my part, I rejoice they have found the treasure.'

'They say the image is of silver.'

'Silver? Nay, I saw it myself, and 'tis of marble; naked and shameless.'

'Lord forgive us! Are we to soil our hands for such rubbish as that?'

'Whither art going, Zacchello?'

'To the field; to my work.'

'God go with you! And I'll to the vineyard.'

At this all the fury of the priest was let loose on his parishioners.

'Infidel dogs, abortions of Cain! would you abandon your pastor? Know ye
not, spawn of Satan, that did I not pray for you day and night, and beat
my breast with weeping and fasting, your whole sinful village would long
ere this have been sunk into the earth? But it is ended! I leave you,
shaking off the dust from my feet. Cursed be the land! Cursed the corn
and the water and the flocks; and your sons and your sons' sons. I am
your father, your shepherd no more. I renounce you! Anathema!'


VII

In the restored calm of the villa, where the goddess lay on her golden
bed, Giorgio Merula went up to the stranger who was still measuring.

'You are studying the proportions of divinity?' said the scholar
patronisingly: 'You would reduce beauty to mathematics?'

The other raised his eyes for an instant; then silently, as if he had
not heard the question, continued his work. The compasses contracted and
expanded, describing geometrical figures; quietly and firmly the
stranger put the angle measure to the fair lips of Aphrodite--lips whose
smile had struck terror into Giovanni's heart--reckoned the result, and
set it in a note-book.

'Pardon my curiosity,' insisted Merula, 'how many divisions are there?'

'This is a rough measurement,' said the unknown, unwillingly; 'generally
I divide the human face into degrees, minutes, seconds and thirds, each
division being the twelfth part of the preceding one.'

'Say you so?' cried Merula, 'meseems the last subdivision must be less
than the finest hair.'

'A third,' explained the other still grudgingly, 'is 1/48823 of the
whole face.'

Merula lifted his eyebrows with an incredulous smile. 'Well, we live and
learn. I never thought it were possible to reach such accuracy.'

'The more accurate the better,' returned his companion.

'Truly it may be so; yet, you know, in Art, in Beauty, all these
mathematical calculations--What artist in the glow of enthusiasm, of
fiery inspiration, breathed upon by God----'

'Yes, yes,' assented the unknown, evidently wearied; 'none the less I am
anxious to know----'

And stooping he measured the distance from the roots of the hair to the
chin.

'To know?' thought Giovanni. 'Can one _know_ these matters? Folly! Does
he not _feel_? understand?'

Merula, anxious to probe the other to the quick, talked on of the
ancients, and how they should be imitated. The stranger waited till he
had concluded, then said, smiling into his long golden beard:--

'He who can drink from the fountain will not drink from the cup.'

'By your leave!' shouted the scholar, 'if you call the ancients a cup,
whom do you call the fountain?'

'Nature,' said the unknown quietly.

And Merula presumptuously and provokingly continuing to prate, he
disputed no further, but assented with evasive politeness. Only in his
cold eyes weariness and reserve became more manifest. At last Messer
Giorgio, having come to the end of his argument, was reduced to silence.
Then the other pointed out certain depressions in the marble, which in
no light could be detected by the sight, yet were plain to the touch as
the hand moved over the smooth surface. '_Moltissime dolcezze_,' he
called them; and then his eye travelled over the figure, as if in one
look he would possess himself of its sum.

'And I who thought he did not feel!' said Giovanni to himself. 'Yet if
he feels, how can he measure and split it up into numbers? Who is he,
Messer Giorgio?' he whispered; 'tell me the name of this man?'

'Ha, little monk! is it you?' said Merula turning round; 'I had forgot
you. Nay, but it is your idol: can it be that you knew him not? It is
Messer Leonardo da Vinci.'

And the historian presented Giovanni to the Master.


VIII

Through the perfect stillness of early morning in the early spring, when
the grass shone emerald between the black olive-roots and the blue
iris-flowers were motionless on their slender stems, Giovanni and
Leonardo, he on horseback, the lad on foot, returned together to
Florence.

'Is this really he?' thought Giovanni, watching him and finding his
minutest gesture interesting.

He was over forty. When silent and pensive his small, keen, pale-blue
eyes, under overhanging golden eyebrows, seemed cold and piercing; yet
when he talked they took an expression of great good nature. The long,
fair beard and curling and luxuriant hair gave him an air of majesty. He
was tall and powerful in build, yet his face had a subtle charm which
was almost feminine, and his thin high voice, though pleasant, was not
manly. His hand, reining a restive steed, was very strong, yet it also
was delicate, with long, slender fingers like a woman's.

They were nearing the town walls; and the misty morning sun shone upon
the dome of the cathedral, and the quaint tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.

'This is my opportunity,' thought Boltraffio. 'I must tell him I would
fain enter his studio as a pupil.'

Just then Leonardo checked his horse and fixed his eyes on a young
falcon circling slowly and easily in the air above its quarry--some duck
or heron in the reeds of the Mugnone's bank. Presently, with a short
cry, it dropped headlong, like a stone, swooping down from the height
and disappearing behind the trees. Leonardo had followed it with his
gaze, not losing a single turn, a movement, a flap of the strong wings;
then he took his note-book from his girdle and jotted down the result of
his observation.

Boltraffio noticed that he held the pencil in his left hand; and
remembered strange tales he had heard of his writing in a mysterious
reversed hand only to be read in a mirror, from right to left, as men
write in the East. Some said he wrote thus to make an enigma of his
wicked heretical opinions about nature and about God.

'Now or never!' Giovanni was saying to himself; but all at once
Antonio's harsh words flashed across his mind: '"Go to him if you would
lose your soul: he is a sinner and an atheist."'

Smiling, Leonardo drew his attention to an almond-tree, on the crest of
a bare, wind-swept hill, very small, very feeble, very solitary, yet
already hopeful and joyous, and decking itself with pale blossoms, which
gleamed and glistened against the azure of the sunlit sky.

Boltraffio could not admire it, for his heart was heavy and perplexed.
Then Leonardo, as if guessing at his disquietude, spoke gentle words
which the young man remembered long afterwards.

'If you wish to be an artist, put away all grief and care from your
mind, save that for art itself. Let your soul be as a mirror reflecting
all objects, all colours, all movements, but itself remaining ever clear
and unmoved.'

They passed in through the gates of Florence.


IX

Boltraffio went to the cathedral, where that morning Fra Girolamo
Savonarola was to preach. As he entered, the last notes of the organ
were dying away under the resounding arches of Santa Maria del Fiore.
The throng had filled the church with suffocating heat and with the low
rustlings of unceasing small movements. Men, women, and children were
separated from each other by drawn curtains. Under the arches, slender
and narrow like arrow-heads, deep gloom and mystery reigned as in a
sleeping forest. The rays of sunlight, refracted by brilliantly coloured
glass, fell in rainbow hues upon the congregation and upon the grey
marble of the pillars. The semi-darkness surrounding the altar was
broken by the glare of candles. Mass was over and the crowd was awaiting
the preacher. All looks were fixed on the wooden pulpit.

Giovanni found a place in the crowd and listened to the whisperings of
his neighbours.

'Will he come soon?' was asked impatiently by a carpenter of low
stature, with a pale perspiring face and lank hair bound by a fillet.

'God knows!' responded a tinker, big and red-faced, but asthmatic. 'He
has with him at San Marco a certain little brother named Marufi, with a
hunchback and a stammering tongue, and 'tis he chooses the hour for his
coming. We waited four hours once, and had thought there would be no
preaching, yet in the end he came.'

'_Santo Dio Benedetto!_ And I have waited since midnight! I am blind for
sleep and for want of a crumb in my mouth. I could sit down upon
knives!'

'Did I not tell thee, Damiano, 'twas matter of patience? Even now we are
so far from the pulpit we shall hear naught.'

'Eh! We shall hear well enough. When he falls to at his shouting and his
thundering, not the deaf only but the very dead must needs hear.'

'They say now, that he prophesies.'

'Not yet! Not till he has built Noah's Ark.'

'He has built it; to the last plank. Yea, and made a parabolic
description thereof. Its length, Faith; its breadth; Charity; its
altitude, Hope. Haste, he says, haste to the Ark of Salvation, while
the doors stand wide. The day cometh when the doors will be put to, and
then many shall weep that they have not repented and have not come in
time to enter within. To-day he preaches of the Flood, the seventeenth
verse of the sixth chapter of the book of Genesis.'

'They say he has had another vision, War, Pestilence!'

'The horsedealer in Vallombrosa said that a night or two agone great
hosts fought in the sky over the city, and one could hear the clash of
swords and the dinting of armour.'

'And it is a certainty, good folk, that on the _Nunziata_ in the Chiesa
dei Servi has been seen a bloody sweat.'

'Go to! And tears run nightly from the Madonna on the Rubaconte bridge.
Lucia, my aunt, saw it herself!'

'And it means no good, rest assured. The Lord have mercy on us,
miserable sinners!'

Meanwhile, among the women, there was a disturbance. An old woman
fainted, and when lifted up, still did not recover her senses. The whole
multitude indeed was worn by the interminable waiting; the pale
carpenter seemed unable to sustain himself longer.

But suddenly a wave stirred the sea of heads, and a whisper ran through
the church.

'He is coming!'

'Nay, 'tis not he, 'tis Fra Domenico da Pescia.'

'I tell you, yea, 'tis he! He has come.'

Giovanni saw a man in the black and white Dominican habit girdled with a
rope, who slowly ascended the pulpit-stair and removed his cowl. His
face was emaciated and yellow as wax, his lips thick, his nose aquiline,
his forehead low. His left hand fell weakly on the desk, his right he
raised clutching the crucifix; and silently with burning eyes he looked
upon the trembling and expectant crowd. Profound silence reigned, in
which each man could hear the beating of his own heart. The eyes of the
monk glowed increasingly, till they were like fiery coals; but he still
kept silence, and the strain of waiting became unendurable. It seemed
that in another moment the crowd would burst into screams.

Yet the calm became deeper, more awful; till suddenly, rending the
silence, came the terrible, lacerating, superhuman cry of the friar:--

'_Ecce ego adduco aquas super terram_, Behold I bring a Flood upon the
earth!'

A shudder passed through the crowd, raising the hair from the head.
Giovanni paled; he fancied the earth quaking, the cathedral arches about
to fall. Beside him the stalwart tinker was shaking like a leaf, his
teeth chattering. The head of the feeble carpenter had sunk backward on
his shoulders as if he had received a blow, his face was shrivelled, his
eyelids closed.

What followed was not a sermon but a delirium, which took hold of these
thousands of people and shook them as a storm shakes the withered
leaves. Giovanni listened, scarcely understanding. Detached phrases
reached his ear:--

'See ye, see how the heavens have already darkened; the sun is purple,
like clotted blood. Flee! Hide yourselves! There cometh even now a rain
of brimstone and fire; a hail of fiery stones and thunderbolts. _Fuge O
Sion quae habitas apud filiam Babylonis!_ O Italy, chastisement cometh
upon chastisement. After pestilence, war; and hunger after war! Judgment
is here, judgment is there! Everywhere there is judgment. Among you the
living suffice not to carry the dead. The dead in your houses shall be
so many that the grave-diggers shall call to you to throw them out, and
shall heap them on carts, yea, to the very necks of the horses, and
shall throw them one upon the other and burn them. And then again they
shall go through the streets and cry, "Who has any dead? Who has any
dead?" And you will answer them: "I throw to you my son, I throw to you
my brother, I throw to you my husband!" And then they shall go further,
and always they shall cry: "Bring forth your dead! bring forth your
dead!" O Florence! O Rome! O Italy! Past is the time of songs and of
feasting; ye are sickened unto death. Lord, Thou art witness, that with
my words I would have averted this ruin! But I can no more. I have no
words more. I can but weep, and run over with my tears. Mercy! Mercy! O
merciful Lord! Alas! my poor people! Alas! my Florence!'

He opened his arms, and the last words had sunk to a scarcely audible
whisper. They passed over the crowd and died away, like the rustle of
wind in the leaves--a sigh of infinite pity.

Pressing his white lips on the crucifix, he knelt and burst into sobs.
The sermon was ended. The slow, heavy organ-notes rolled out, persuasive
and immense, increasingly solemn and terrible, like the sound of the
mighty ocean.

A woman's voice cried _'Misericordia!_'

And thousands of voices answered, calling one to another; and like corn
stalks bowing before the wind, the people fell upon their knees, line
upon line, wave upon wave, crowding upon, striking against each other,
like a flock of sheep panic-struck at the advance of a storm; and the
long, agonising wail of penitents upon whom pressed the terror of
immediate ruin, rose to Heaven, mingling with the pealing of music,
shaking the ground, the marble pillars, and the vaults of the cathedral.

'_Misericordia! Misericordia!_'

Giovanni also sank to his knees, sobbing. The tall tinker rolled against
him, breathing hard; the pale carpenter caught his breath and cried like
a child, moaning--

'_Misericordia!_'

And Boltraffio remembered his pride, and his love of life, his desire to
escape from Fra Benedetto, and to give himself up to the dangerous arts
of Messer Leonardo, the enemy of God; he recalled the past fearful night
on the Hill of the Mill, the recovered Venus, his sinful enthusiasm for
the heathen beauty of the 'White She-devil'; stretching forth his hands
to heaven, he mingled his voice with that of the despairing crowd, and
cried--

'Lord! Lord! have compassion on me! I have sinned before thee. Pardon,
and have mercy.'

At that moment, raising his face, wet with tears, he saw at his side the
tall, upright form of Leonardo da Vinci. The artist, leaning carelessly
against a column, held in his right hand his unfailing sketch-book; with
his left he was drawing; now and then he glanced at the pulpit as if
hoping to see once more the head of the preacher.

A stranger, and surrounded by the terrified crowd, Leonardo maintained a
superb composure. In his cool, blue eyes, on his thin lips, tightly
compressed like those of a man of minute observation, there was the same
aloofness and curiosity with which he had mathematically measured the
body of the Aphrodite. At sight of him the tears dried in Giovanni's
eyes, and the prayer was silenced upon his lips.

Leaving the church he followed the artist and asked permission to see
his sketch. Leonardo demurred, but presently handed the boy his
sketch-book. And Giovanni saw a frightful caricature; not Savonarola,
but an old and hideous devil in the dress of a monk, like the preacher
indeed, but as if disfigured by self-inflicted and torturing penance,
his pride and his desires still unsubdued. The lower jaw protruded,
wrinkles intersected the cheek, the neck was twisted and black as a
mummy's, the bushy, beetling brows, the rabid glance scarce preserved a
semblance of humanity. All that was dark, terrible, and superstitious,
all which gave Savonarola into the power of the deformed, tongue-tied
visionary Marufi, was expressed by Leonardo in this sketch; brought out
with neither anger nor pity, but with an imperturbable and impartial
clear-sightedness.

And Giovanni remembered his words: '_L'ingegno dell' pittore vuol essere
a similitudine dello specchio_. The genius of the painter should be as a
mirror, reflecting all objects, and colours, and movements, itself ever
transparent and serene.'

The pupil of Benedetto raised his eyes to the artist's face, and felt
that though threatened by eternal damnation, though he were to find in
Messer Leonardo a veritable servant of Antichrist, yet to leave him had
become impossible; an irresistible force was drawing him to this man;
woe unto him if he failed to penetrate into the very depths of this
being and of his art.


X

Two days later, Messer Cipriano having been detained by affairs in
Florence, and unable to arrange for the transport of the Venus, Grillo
burst in upon him with most unwelcome tidings. Don Faustino, it seemed,
had left San Gervaso and betaken himself to San Maurizio, the
neighbouring village. Here, having terrified the people with talk of the
chastisement of Heaven, he had collected a party by night, besieged the
villa, broken in the doors, thrashed Strocco the gardener, who had been
left in charge of the statue, and bound him hand and foot. Then the
priest had recited over the goddess an ancient prayer called '_Oratio
super effigies vasaque in loco antiqua reperta_,' in which the servant
of the Church asks God to purify all statuary, vessels, and other
objects dug out of the ground, and to convert them to the profit of
Christian souls, to the glory of the Trinity, '_ut, omni immunditia
depulsa, sint fidelibus tuis utenda per Christum dominum nostrum_.' Then
they broke up the statue of the goddess, cast the fragments into a
furnace, made of them a cement, and with it daubed the new-raised wall
of the village cemetery.

As he told this tale the old man wept for grief. But the event helped
Giovanni Boltraffio to a decision. That very day he presented himself
before Messer Leonardo and begged to be received as a pupil. Leonardo
accepted him.

A little later, tidings were brought to Florence that Charles VIII.,
Most Christian King of France, had taken the field with a countless host
for the conquering of the Two Sicilies, and probably also of Rome and
Florence. Panic spread among the citizens. They perceived that the
prophecy of Savonarola was being fulfilled. Punishment was at their
door! The sword of the Lord was drawn upon Italy!




BOOK II

ECCE DEUS--ECCE HOMO--1494


     'Behold the man!'--ST. JOHN xix. 5.
             'Behold the God!'

     (Inscription on the monument of Francesco Sforza.)


I

'If the eagle can sustain himself in the rarest atmosphere, if great
ships by sails can float across the waves, why cannot likewise Man, by
means of powerful wings, make himself lord of the winds, and rise, the
conqueror of space?'

Leonardo found these words in one of his old note-books, written five
years earlier with the buoyancy of hope. Opposite was the sketch of a
machine; a beam, to which by means of iron rods, were attached wings to
be moved by cords and pulleys. Now the apparatus seemed to him clumsy
and absurd.

His new machine was like an enormous bat. The body of the wings was
formed by five wooden fingers, like a skeleton hand, with many joints
and pliant articulations. Tendons and muscles connecting these fingers
were formed by strips of tanned leather and laces of raw silk. The wing
rose by means of a crank and a moveable piston, and was covered by
impermeable taffeta. It resembled the webbed foot of a goose. There were
four wings moving in turn like the legs of a horse. Their length was
forty _braccia_, their spread, eight. They bent backward for propulsion,
and dropped to make the machine rise. A man was to sit in it astride,
and with his feet in stirrups was to move the wings by a machinery of
cords, blocks, and levers. A great rudder, feathered like the tail of a
bird, was to be turned by his head.

But a bird, before the first flap of his wings carries him from the
earth, must first raise himself by his feet. The short-legged swift, for
instance, if placed upon the ground struggles but cannot fly. Therefore
in the machine two cane stilts were indispensable, although their
inelegance greatly disturbed the inventor. Perfection could not exist
without beauty. He plunged into calculations, hoping to lay his finger
on a blunder. Failing, he impatiently drew a pencil across a whole page
of figures and wrote on the margin--

'Incorrect'; and presently, '_Satanasso!_' He was enraged.

Then he recommenced; but his calculations became more and more confused,
and the scarce perceptible error grew increasingly distinct, as he
worked on and on by the light of a flickering candle which offended his
eyes.

Then his cat, suddenly waking, leaped on the work-table, stretched
himself, humped his back, and began to play with a moth-eaten scarecrow
of a stuffed bird dangling from a wooden perch--a contrivance for
studying the centre of gravity in the act of flight. The inventor pushed
the cat angrily away, nearly knocking him down and causing a plaintive
mewing.

'Bless your heart! you may go where you like so long as you don't
interfere with me,' said Leonardo apologetically, rubbing the smooth,
black fur which emitted electric sparks. The cat purred, sat down
majestically, doubling his velvet paws under him, and fixing on his
master steady green eyes full of self-satisfaction and mystery.

Once more figures, fractions, brackets, equations, cubic and square
roots appeared upon the paper. It was the second night he had passed
without sleep; for a whole month since his return from Florence he had
scarcely set foot outside the house, but had worked unceasingly at the
flying-machine.

The branches of a white acacia intruded through an open window, and
sometimes cast on the table their tender, odorous blossoms. The
moonlight, softened by a mist of clouds, tinted like mother-o'-pearl,
flooded the chamber, and mingled with the murky illumination from the
tallow candle. The room was choked with machinery and instruments,
astronomical, physical, chemical, mechanical, and anatomical. Wheels,
levers, springs, screws, chimneys, pistons, arcs, suction-tubes, brass,
steel, iron, and glass, like the limbs of half-seen monsters or colossal
insects, peered out of the darkness. There was a diving-bell, beside it
the dulled crystal of an optical apparatus resembling a great eye; then
the skeleton of a horse, a stuffed crocodile, a human abortion preserved
in spirit, a pair of boat-shaped shoes for walking on the water, and
lastly, the clay head of a child or of an angel, strayed hither from the
sculptor's studio, and smiling slyly and mournfully at its surroundings.
In the background was a crucible and blacksmith's bellows, and coals lay
red upon the ashes of a furnace. Gigantic wings, one still bare, the
other already invested with its membrane, were spread out over all the
room, dominating the whole from floor to ceiling. And sprawling on the
ground, with nodding head, lay a man, Zoroastro, Leonardo's assistant,
who had fallen asleep at his post, oil flowing from the blackened brass
ladle which he held in his hand. One of the wings touched the chest of
the sleeper, and was softly vibrating as he breathed; it seemed alive,
and its sharp upper end rustled against the rafters of the ceiling.

In the uncertain light the machine, with this man between its extended
and moving wings, was like some stupendous vampire ready to rise and
fly.


II

Gardens surrounded Leonardo's house outside Milan--between the fortress
and the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie--and thence came a fine
perfume of fruits and herbs, thyme, and bergamot, and fennel. The moon
had set. Swallows under the windows were twittering and preparing to
fly, ducks splashed and quacked in the neighbouring pond. The candle was
dying in its socket; voices of the pupils were heard from the studio
hard by.

The students were two, Giovanni Boltraffio and Andrea Salaino. Giovanni
was copying an anatomical figure, and sitting before a contrivance for
the study of perspective--a wooden frame with a string network which
corresponded with lines traced on the drawing-paper: Salaino was fitting
a slab of alabaster to a wooden panel. He was a pretty lad with
innocent eyes and fair curls, petted by the Master, who drew his angels
from him.

'How think you, Andrea?' asked Boltraffio, 'will Messer Leonardo soon
finish this machine?'

'God knows!' answered Salaino whistling, and settling the embroidered
flaps of his new slippers. 'Last year he sat two months at it and
nothing resulted but laughter. That crooked bear Zoroastro set himself
to fly at all hazards. The master forbade him, but he did it. The fool
hung himself all round with a necklace of bullock's bladders, lest he
should break anything if he fell; then he mounted the roof, flapped his
wings; and true it is he rose, but God wot 'twas the wind carried him,
and presently he turned topsy-turvy and fell plump on to a dunghill; by
the Lord's mercy 'twas soft and he broke no bones, but the bladders
burst with a roar like a cannon, the daws in the belfry fled away for
very terror, and there lay the new Icarus kicking the air, on his head
in the manure.'

Just then the third pupil entered, Cesare da Sesto, a man no longer
young; sickly, and splenetic, with malicious but intelligent eyes. He
had a sandwich in one hand, wine in the other.

'Peuh! the sour stuff!' he said frowning and spitting, 'and the ham, by
my troth, is boot-leather--yet one pays two thousand ducats annually for
these delicacies!'

'Try the other cask from under the pantry stair.'

'I have tried it. Of the two 'tis the worse;' then pointing to Salaino's
new plum-coloured and gaily-feathered cap, he added, 'Oho! oho! some of
us, it seems, get new things. But 'tis the second month since they got
any new ham in the kitchen. Of a certainty things are well managed here!
We lead dog's lives. Marco vows on the bones of his mother that the
master has not one _soldo_ left in the bag. He has squandered everything
on these cursed wings of his, and begins his sparing by starving us. But
I'll teach you where else his money goes. In gifts for his darlings, in
medals and velvet caps. Have you no shame, Andrea, to receive alms? Is
Messer Leonardo your father or your brother? or are you still a baby?'

'Cesare,' interrupted Giovanni, to give a new turn to the discourse,
'you made promise to expound me the axioms of perspective. We waste time
expecting the master, who is overstudious of his machine----'

'Ay, ay, my friend. We shall all be confounded some day by that machine,
devil take it! And if it is not this machine 'tis another. I remember
how in the very middle of the _Cenacolo_, the Master, forsooth, must
needs break off to invent a new mincing-machine for sausages; and the
head of St. James could not get stuck on his shoulders, because Leonardo
was dissatisfied with the blades of the cutter. And the best of his
Madonnas had to wait in the corner, while he devised a spit for the
roasting of sucking-pigs. And what think you of that his other grand
discovery, the lye of fowl's-dung for the washing of linen? There is no
folly for which Messer Leonardo will not sacrifice his time if he can
but get away from his paint-brush;' and Cesare's face puckered itself,
and his lips curled in a malicious laugh.

'Why, I pr'ythee, why does God give genius to such men?' he added in a
low, trembling voice.


III

Leonardo was still at work, bending over his writing-table. A swallow
flew in at the window and wheeled about the room, brushing against the
ceiling and the walls, till caught by the great bat, its little, living
wings fast held by the network of artificial tendons. Cautiously
Leonardo rose and delicately freed the prisoner, took it in his hand,
kissed the silky black head, and let it fly away. The swallow soared,
and was lost in the blue air, screaming its cries of joy.

'How simple, how easy its flight,' he thought, as he followed it with
disappointed, envious eyes. He threw a contemptuous glance at his
machine, the dark skeleton of that tremendous bat.

The man who was lying on the floor suddenly awoke. He was a Florentine,
a skilful mechanic and smith, by name Zoroastro, or more shortly, Astro
da Paretola. A clumsy giant, with the simple face of a child, always
covered with soot and grime, he looked a Cyclops, for he had but one
eye, the other having been long ago destroyed by a spark from some
blazing metal.

Rubbing his single orb and scratching his shaggy head he cried, 'The
devil take me for a blockhead! Master, why did you not hinder me from
slumbering? I who was so zealously affected, who only thought how to
hurry the evening that the morning and the flying might come!'

'You were wise to sleep,' said Leonardo, 'for the wings have failed.'

'What! these also? Nay, master, but I will not make your machine again.
Think of the money, the labour we have thrown to the wind! What better
can you want? Not to fly, on wings like those, would be impossible! An
elephant could rise on them. Pr'ythee, master, let me try! I will prove
them over water, and then if I fall I'll come off with no worse than a
bathing. I can swim as a fish; I wasn't born to be drowned.'

And he clasped his hands supplicatingly. Leonardo, however, shook his
head.

'Patience, friend, have yet patience. It will come in its own time, and
then--'

'_Then?_' cried the smith, almost in tears. 'Why not _now_? Of a surety,
master, as true as God is in heaven, I shall fly.'

'No, Astro, fly thou wilt not. By a mathematical law----'

'I could have sworn you would say that! To the devil with your
mathematical laws, for they upset everything. And to think of the years
we have laboured! I am sick to remember it! Every gnat, mosquito, fly, I
pray you license--every _muck_-fly, every _dunghill_-fly--has its wings;
and men crawl like worms. 'Tis rank injustice! And why should we doubt?
There they are, your wings, ready, and beautiful; ready to be blessed of
God, and spread, and to be off! And then we shall see what we shall
see!'

He paused, seemed to recall something, and continued more calmly:--

'I would tell you a thing, master. This very night I dreamed, nay, but I
dreamed----'

'I conceive you! You flew.'

'Ay. But how? Hear me. I stood in a chamber, where I know not, and amid
a throng. They looked at me and pointed, and then they laughed. And I
said to myself, "cursed spite 'twill be if I fly not." So I got up and I
shook my arms and I rose; I warrant you 'twas hard, as though I would
raise a mountain on my back! But 'twas soon lighter, and I rose till my
head was in the roof. And they cried aloud, Behold him! he flieth! Ay,
and I passed through the window like yon bird, and I circled higher and
yet higher, till I touched the sky. And the wind whistled in my ears,
and I laughed for very joy. "Why," I questioned of myself, "did I never
fly till now? 'Tis mighty easy; and there is no call for any machinery
at all."'


IV

Shouts, oaths, and the quick thump of footsteps interrupted them. The
door was flung wide, and a fiery-haired, freckle-faced man, dragging a
child of ten by the ear, burst into the chamber. It was Leonardo's
pupil, Marco d'Oggione.

'May the Lord send you an ill Easter!' he shouted; 'Rascal, I will set
my heels upon your throat!'

'What coil is this, Marco?' asked Leonardo.

'I pray you listen, Master. This same young rogue has filched my silver
buckles; ten florins each did they cost me! One he has gambled away at
his dice; the other I have found in his stocking. I did but pull him by
the hair, and now, son of the devil that he is, he hath bitten my finger
to the bone.'

And he would again have attacked the little lad by his curls had not
Leonardo rescued him. Then Marco, who kept the keys of the house, took
them from his pouch and flung them on the ground.

'Take them up, sir! I will be warden no longer. I live no longer in the
house with rascals and with thieves!'

'Peace, Marco, peace; and leave this babe to me.'

The other three now came from the studio, and presently Maturina, the
fat cook, squeezed herself into the group, carrying her market basket.
Seeing the little sinner, she flung up her hands and gabbled with the
monotony of dry peas pouring through a broken bag. Cesare talked also
volubly, demanding why this 'pagan of a Jacopo' was allowed to stay, for
the playing of every malicious and spiteful trick capable of invention;
had he not maimed the watch-dog, stoned the nests of the swallows, torn
wings from butterflies?

Jacopo had taken refuge with the Master, his pale pretty face quite
impassive, his eyes, sinister in their brilliance, turned to Leonardo
with mute supplication.

Leonardo would have appeased the tumult, but on his face sat a strange
air of perplexity and weakness, not lost upon the contemptuous Cesare.

Presently the noise subsided of itself; and then Leonardo, with his
customary calm, called Giovanni and invited him to an inspection of the
_Cenacolo_, the Last Supper; his greatest work. Giovanni flushed with
pleasure, and they went together.


V

However they paused by the courtyard fountain that Leonardo, after his
sleepless night, might refresh himself by bathing his face. The day was
cloudy, but windless, and over all things streamed an argent light which
seemed to come from under water; days like these pleased the artist best
for painting. They were still at the well when the boy Jacopo crept up,
bearing in his hands a little case made of bark.

'Messer Leonardo,' he murmured, 'I have brought it--for you,' and
cautiously raising the lid he showed a huge imprisoned spider. 'I have
watched it this three days,' he said enthusiastically; ''tis poisonous!
And 'tis a terror to see how he devoureth flies!'

His face was radiant now, and catching a fly he gave it to the captive.
The spider seized the victim with its hairy legs, and there was a fight
and great buzzing.

'He sucks it! He sucks it!' cried the child in an ecstasy; and Leonardo
bent over the struggling creatures to watch.

It seemed to Giovanni that on the two so different faces was the same
expression: a hideous pleasure in the horrible.

When the fly had been murdered and devoured the boy closed the little
box, and said, 'I will put it on your table, Messer Leonardo; you will
like to see how he fights with other spiders.'

Then he raised supplicating eyes, and went on with quivering lips,
'Messere, be not wroth with me. I will go from you. I see that I am a
trouble to you; you are good, but those others are evil; as truly am I
also--I who understand not pretending, as do they! So be it; I will go
very far away, and will live alone. 'Twill be better so. Only do thou
pardon me, Master, I pray, I supplicate. Pardon thou me.' And great
tears shone on the child's long lashes as he went on. 'Pardon me, Master
Leonardo, and I will leave you the spider for a remembrance of me.
Spiders live many years; and I will ask Astro to feed it.'

'Whither would you go, poor child? Nay, Marco shall forgive thee; I am
not wroth with thee, and truly I will accept thy spider. In the future,
little one, seek to live harmlessly.'

Jacopo turned his eyes to his Master, and in them was no gratitude, only
unbounded astonishment; and Leonardo smiled at him, as if in his great
wisdom he understood the child, and knew him one of those innocent in
their wrong doing, because by nature formed for evil.

'It grows late, Giovanni; let us go on,' said Leonardo; and together
they trod the silent street which presently led them between the walls
of gardens, vineyards, and orchards, to the convent of Santa Maria delle
Grazie.


VI

Boltraffio had for some time been distressed by the fact that he could
no longer pay his master the monthly fee of six florins which had been
arranged. His uncle had quarrelled with him, and now refused him further
assistance, and Fra Benedetto, who had lent him the means for two
months, could do no more.

So this morning Giovanni determined to explain matters to his master. He
turned deprecatingly to him, and reddening to the roots of his hair,
stammered:--

'Messere, we are at the 14th of the month, and it was agreed I should
pay you on the 10th. It irks me to confess it, but I have no more than
these three florins. Would you consent to wait? Soon I have hope to get
money. Merula has promised me copying.'

Leonardo looked at him astonished.

'What speech is this, Giovanni? Are you not ashamed?'

By his disciple's blush, by his confusion, by his patched shoes and
threadbare clothes he guessed that Giovanni was very poor. So he
frowned, and talked of something else; but presently took occasion to
hand the boy a gold piece, saying carelessly, 'Lad, go buy me twenty
sheets of the blue paper for my drawings, and a parcel of red chalk,
and another of badger brushes. Take the money.'

'A ducat? to pay a matter of ten _soldi_? I will bring you the surplus.'

'By no means. I care not for such trifles. Some day, perchance, you will
be able to pay it back. And talk no more to me of money: do you hear?'

He went on at once to remark on the misty outlines of the larch trees
along both banks of the straight canal called the Naviglio Grande, which
carried the eye into the distance by their long rows.

'Have you observed, Giovanni, that in a light mist the trees show blue,
in a thick mist, grey?'

And he talked further of the shadows thrown by the clouds upon the
hills, one tone in summer when their trees are in leaf, another in
winter when their trees are bare. Then he said abruptly.

'You have thought me a skinflint because on our first coming to terms
you saw me note every detail of the bargain in a book. I caught that
trick from my good father, Piero, the notary, who knows his way in
affairs passing well. But the habit is an idle one for me. I am extreme
to mark trifles such as the price of the feather in Salaino's cap; yet
thousands of ducats go from me, and I know not whither. For the future,
boy, regard not this trick. If thou hast need of money, take it; and be
sure I give it to thee as a father gives to a son.'

And Leonardo looked at him with a smile so tender, that the pupil's
heart was lightened and overflowed with joy. Then again the master
talked of trees, and pointing to a misshapen white mulberry, bade his
disciple observe that not only every tree but also every leaf has its
own figure different from its fellows, even as every son of man has his
own face. It seemed to Giovanni that he spoke of trees with no less
insight than he had shown in speaking of his needy disciple; as though
loving observation of all things living had sharpened his eye to the
penetration of a seer and a clairvoyant.

They were now in sight of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church belonging
to the Dominican convent; a brick edifice with a broad dome like a
tent--the early work of Bramante. It rose from the plain behind a grove
of dark mulberry trees, and seemed rosy and gay against its background
of white and rainy clouds.

The pair passed at once into the convent refectory.


VII

It was a long bare hall, whitewashed, and with a roof of wooden rafters.
There was a smell of damp, of incense, and of fast-day fare. The Father
Superior had his dining-board in the recess by the entrance; on either
side were the long narrow tables for the monks. So still was it that the
buzz of the flies was audible in the windows, glazed with small, yellow,
and dusty panes, and hollowed like the cells of a honeycomb. Now and
then voices came from the kitchen with a clatter of iron saucepans.

Opposite the prior's table, at the end of the hall, there rose a
scaffolding of wood covered with coarse grey linen; Giovanni divined
that behind it was the _magnum opus_, upon which the Master had already
laboured for twelve years; the _Cenacolo_, the Last Supper.

Leonardo having ascended the scaffold and opened a wooden case which
contained his sketches, cartoons, paints, etc., took a small, well-worn,
much-annotated Latin book, and handing it to Giovanni, bade him read the
thirteenth chapter of St. John. Then he removed the covering from the
fresco.

Giovanni's first impression was that he saw not a painting but a
prolongation of the room itself against an actual background of air.
Another chamber seemed to have opened out behind the withdrawn curtain;
the beams of the ceiling passed on into it, contracting in the distance,
and the light of day was blended in the quiet evening light above the
hills of Zion, which glowed through the triple window. This second
supper-room was little less austere and bare than the convent refectory.
Though more solemn, the sacred table, with its cups, plates, knives, and
flagons, was like the board at which the monks nightly supped; the cloth
with its narrow stripes, its knotted corners, its unsmoothed folds,
seemed still damp, as if but just taken from the convent linen room.

Giovanni opened the Gospel and read:--

'Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was
come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, ... and
supper being ended, the devil having put into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him....

'Jesus was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, Verily verily, I
say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. Then the disciples looked
one on another, doubting of whom he spake. Now there was leaning on
Jesus' bosom one of his disciples whom Jesus loved.'

Giovanni again raised his eyes to the fresco. The faces of the apostles
were so animated that he seemed to hear their speech, to look into the
depths of their souls, confounded as they were by the most mysterious,
the most terrible of all catastrophes that have ever taken place--the
birth of that sin by which God was to die.

Specially was he impressed by Judas, by St. Peter, and St. John. The
head of Judas was not yet painted, and the body, bent backward, but
dimly outlined. Clutching desperately at the bag with convulsive
fingers, he had overturned the salt-cellar, and the salt was spilled.
Peter, impetuous in his wrath, was starting up from behind, a knife
still in his right hand, his left on the shoulder of John, as if asking
the beloved disciple 'of whom doth He speak?' With his silver hair, with
his splendid resentment, his whole frame showed that fiery zeal, that
thirst for great deeds, with which, upon understanding the ineluctable
sufferings of his Master he was to cry 'Lord, why cannot I follow thee
now? I will lay down my life for thy sake!' John, on the contrary, with
his long silken tresses, his eyelids lowered as if in the peace of
sleep, his folded hands, the long oval of his face--seemed the ideal of
calm and heavenly serenity. Alone among the disciples he knew no
suffering, no fear, no wrath.

Giovanni saw, and he said to himself, 'Here is the true Leonardo! And I
had doubted and wellnigh believed the calumnies. The man impious who
created that? Nay, who among men is closer to Christ than he?'

The painter, meantime, having completed the face of John with delicate
touches of the brush, began the charcoal outline of the head of Jesus.
Vainly, however; he had meditated upon that head for ten years, yet
still he could not accomplish even the first sketch. Always when
confronted by that emptiness where the divine countenance should appear,
the artist trembled with mortal anguish and the sense of his own
impotence. Throwing the charcoal aside, passing a cloth over the few
lines he had lightly traced, he fell into one of those reveries which
sometimes lasted for entire hours. Giovanni ventured to approach him,
and saw his face as it were aged, severe, wearing the imprint of
unremitting tension, of silent despair.

Yet, his eyes falling on those of his pupil, Leonardo said kindly--

'Well, then, _amico mio_, what say you of it?'

'What words have I, Master? It is beautiful, with a beauty beyond aught
in this world. None other has so understood that scene! But nay, I will
not speak--I cannot.'

His voice shook with tears; but presently he added in a low voice, 'One
thing I would ask. Among such faces, what can be the face of Judas?'

The master, without answering, handed him a paper sketch. It showed a
face terrible but not repulsive, not wicked even, but big with infinite
grief, with the profound bitterness of great knowledge.

Giovanni compared it with that of St. John. 'Yes,' he exclaimed
awestruck; 'it is he! He of whom it is said, Satan entered into him; who
perhaps knew more than any of them, but who would not accept the cry,
that 'all may be one!' because he desired to be _an one_ by himself.'

He was interrupted by Cesare da Sesto, who burst into the refectory,
followed by a man in the court livery.

'At last! at last!' he cried; 'Master, we have sought you in every
place! The duchess requires you--on a grave matter.'

'Your Worship will have the kindness to come with me to the palace,'
said the servant.

'What is the cause?'

'A disaster, Messer Leonardo. The water pipes do not work; and this
morning when Her Excellence was pleased to get into her bath, and her
woman had gone to the adjoining chamber for linen, the tap broke, so
that Her Excellence was nearly scalded. She is pleased to be very wroth;
and Messer Ambrogio Ferrari, the steward, complains greatly, and saith
he hath more than once warned your Worship about these pipes.'

'What puerility is this?' replied Leonardo; 'can you not see I am at
work? Go to Zoroastro. In half an hour he will repair everything.'

'Messere, I was told not to return without your Worship.'

Leonardo, however, went back to his picture. But when his eye fell on
the blank space destined for the Saviour's head, his brows knit with
discouragement, and, realising fresh failure, he descended from the
easel.

'Well, we will go. You, Giovanni, come for me to the outer courtyard of
the castle, Cesare will show you the way; I will expect you by the
_Cavallo_.'

By this name he spoke of his great equestrian statue of Francesco
Sforza.

And to Giovanni's amazement, without another glance at the _Cenacolo_,
the Master followed the scullion to mend the pipes of the ducal bath.

'So you can't take your eyes off the thing?' said Cesare mockingly to
Boltraffio; 'certes, 'tis a wonderful work; at least until one sees
through it.'

'What is your meaning?'

'Ask me not. I won't spoil your faith. Mayhap in the end you will
discover for yourself. Meanwhile, admire.'

'Cesare, tell me your thought.'

'Good, then. Only be not wroth at the truth. I know all you will find to
say and I will not dispute with you. In good sooth, it is wonderful. No
master hath so much anatomy, such perspective, such science of
chiaroscuro. I challenge it not. All is direct from nature, the face
wrinkles, the folds in the cloth, everything. But the living spirit,
where is that? the God is absent; and will absent Himself for ever. At
bottom, in the soul, all is ice and death! Look, Giovanni! use your
eyes! See the geometrical regularity; four triangles, two contemplative,
two active; and their centre is Christ. Look narrowly. On the right you
have perfect goodness in John, perfect badness in Judas, the dividing of
good and evil (that is, justice) in Peter. Beside them the active triad,
Andrew, James, and Bartholomew. Now turn to the left; another
contemplative triangle; the love of Philip, the faith of James, the
wisdom of Thomas; then again, activity in another triad. Not
inspiration, Giovanni, but geometry; mathematics in the seat of
beauty. All calculated, reasoned _ad nauseam_, tested to repulsion,
weighed in the balance, measured by the compasses. Under the holy
things--contempt.'

'Cesare, Cesare!' cried Giovanni with gentle reproof. 'How little you
know the Master! Why do you hate him?'

'And you think perchance you know him, and therefore you love him?'
returned Cesare quickly, turning to his companion with a bitter smile.
In his eyes blazed such unextinguishable malice that Giovanni
instinctively averted his own.

'You are unjust, Cesare,' he resumed after a pause; 'the picture is
incomplete; the Christ is not yet there.'

'And will He be there? Do you expect it? Well, we shall see. Only mark
you my words. I say Messer Leonardo will never finish the _Cenacolo_;
never paint the Judas, nor the Christ! For, see you, my friend, one may
do much by mathematics and by experiments in science; but not
everything. More is needed. There is a limit which he, with all his
learning, can never pass.'

They left the monastery and moved towards the Castello di Porta Giovia.
Boltraffio was long silent, then he said:--

'In one point, Cesare, you certainly are in error. The Judas exists
already; I have seen it.'

'When? Where?'

'Just now--in the convent. He showed me the drawing.'

'You?'

Cesare stared, then said slowly, and as if by an effort.

'How was it? Good?'

Giovanni nodded; and Cesare after this kept silence.


VIII

Arrived at the castle gates, they crossed the drawbridge to the Torre
del Filarete, which looked to the south, and was deeply moated. Here
even at noon it was dark; and the air was laden with an undefinable
odour of barracks--the smell of stables, straw, and sour bread. Under
the resounding arches came echoes of the laughter and curses of the
hired foreign soldiery.

Cesare had the pass; but Giovanni was regarded with mistrust, and his
name entered in the guard-book. Crossing a second drawbridge, where they
submitted to a second examination, they reached the deserted inner court
of the castle called the Piazza d'Arme. Straight before them was the
stern Torre di Bona; to the right, the entrance to the Corte Ducale; to
the left, the Rocchetta, a veritable eagle's nest, the part of the
castle most difficult of access. In the centre of the square, surrounded
by ill-made wooden fences, which were already moss-grown and
weather-stained, rose an unfinished colossal equestrian statue in
greenish clay; _Il Cavallo_, the bold achievement of Leonardo da Vinci,
no less than twenty _braccia_ in altitude. The tremendous horse, dark
against the watery sky, was rearing; a fallen warrior was beneath his
hoofs; on his back, Francesco Sforza, the great _condottiere_,
half-soldier, half brigand, wholly adventurer, who had served with his
sword and his blood for money. The son of a peasant, strong as a lion,
astute as a fox, he attained by sagacity, by crime, and by great
exploits, the summit of power, and died on the throne of the Dukes of
Milan. Pale sunshine fell full on the colossal figure, and in the
grossness of the double chin, in the rapacity of the fierce and vigilant
eye, Giovanni saw the calm of the gorged wild beast. Leonardo himself
had inscribed the clay with this distich:--

     'Expectant animi molemque futuram
      Suscipiunt; fluat aes; vox erit; Ecce Deus.'

The last two words were astounding to Giovanni. 'Behold the god.'

'A god?' he repeated, looking at the colossal clay, at the victim
trampled by the violent conqueror. He remembered the quiet convent
refectory of 'Our Lady of Grace,' the hills of Zion, the celestial
beauty of St. John, the stillness of the Last Supper: and that God, of
whom it was said, 'Behold the Man!'

At this moment Leonardo himself appeared.

'Let us hurry,' he said; 'it seems that the kitchen chimneys are
smoking; and if we do not flee they will be calling me back to mend
them.'

Giovanni could not answer him; he stood downcast and pallid.

'Master,' he said presently, 'I crave your pardon; but I have thought
long, and still I comprehend not how you were able to create the
_Cavallo_ and the _Cenacolo_ at one and the same time.'

Leonardo looked at his disciple in quiet surprise.

'Why not?'

'Oh, Messer Leonardo! do you not feel yourself that they are impossible
together?'

'No, Giovanni. To my thinking, one helps out the other. My best ideas
for the _Cenacolo_ come to me when I am working at the Colossus; and in
that convent refectory yonder, I love to think upon this monument of
Duke Francesco. The works are twins. I began them together, and together
I shall finish them.'

'Together! Christ, and this man? It is impossible!' And ignorant how to
express his thought, yet feeling his heart on fire, he repeated
passionately, 'It is impossible!'

'And why?' asked the master with his quiet smile.

Giovanni would have tried to reply; but meeting those calm
uncomprehending eyes, the words died upon his lips, for Leonardo would
not have understood them. So he held his peace and thought within
himself.

'Strange! An hour ago, looking at his picture, I fancied that I knew
him. And now I find I do not know him at all. Of which of those twain
does he say in his heart: 'Behold the god?''


IX

That night when all others slept, Giovanni, tormented by insomnia, rose
and went into the court, where was a stone bench under a tent of vine
branches. The court was square, and in its centre was a well; behind the
bench was the wall of the house, opposite the stable; to the left a
stone wall with a wicket-gate which opened on the street of the Porta
Vercellina; to the right the wall of a little garden and a door always
locked and leading to a separate building. Here Astro alone was allowed
ingress, and here Leonardo was wont to work in complete seclusion.

The night was still and warm, with a thick mist, penetrated by dim
moonlight. A low knock sounded on the gate which opened on the road; the
shutter of one of the lower windows was opened, and a man peered out,
asking:--

'Monna Cassandra?'

''Tis I. Open!'

Astro came from the house and let her in; a girl clad in white, which
the moonlight and the mist changed to a strange green. They parleyed
together at the gate; then passed Giovanni without seeing him, where he
sat in the deep shadow of the vine branches.

The girl seated herself on the low wall of the well. Her face was an odd
one, immobile and placid, like the faces of old statues. She had a low
forehead, straight black eyebrows, too small a chin, and eyes of
transparent amber. But what chiefly struck Giovanni was her hair, so
light, so soft, so crisp, as if possessed of life. Like the Medusa's
aureole of serpents, its blackness framed her face, making its paleness
paler, its lips more scarlet, its amber eyes more translucent.

'Then you too, Astro, have heard speak of Frate Angelo?' said the girl.

'Yes, Monna Cassandra. They say the Pope hath sent him to extirpate
heresy and black magic. And I tell you, merely to hear what is told of
the Fathers Inquisitors raises the hair of your skin! God keep us from
their claws! Monna Cassandra, be discreet; and, above all, warn your
aunt.'

'A pretty aunt she is to me!'

'It matters not. Warn that Monna Sidonia with whom you live.'

'Then, blacksmith, you suppose us witches?'

'I suppose nothing. Messer Leonardo hath taught me there is no
witchcraft; nor can be none, by the law of nature. Messer Leonardo knows
everything and believes in nothing.'

'Believes in nothing? Not in the devil? Not in God?'

'Jest not! Messer Leonardo is a saint.'

'And your flying-machine?' she said contemptuously; 'is it ready?'

The smith waved his hand despairingly.

'Ready? We are going to make it all over again!'

'Astro! Astro! You credit this nonsense? These machines are dust cast
into the eyes. I wager Messer Leonardo has flown many a time ere now.'

'Flown? How?'

'He flies--as I fly.'

He surveyed her thoughtfully.

'You fly in dreams, Monna Cassandra.'

'You think that is it? Nay, others have seen me fly. Perhaps you know
not the tale?'

The smith scratched his head hesitatingly.

'But I forget,' she said mockingly; 'you are all learned folk here, who
believe not in miracles, but in mechanics.'

'S'death! Those same mechanics are a weight on my neck. Did you but
know----' He spread out his hands appealingly, and continued: 'Monna
Cassandra; you know my faithfulness. Nor is there temptation to chatter,
lest Frate Angelo play eavesdropper. Tell me, then, in all secrecy, tell
me of your charity with all the particulars----'

'Tell you what?'

'How you fly.'

'Not that, my friend; no. If you know too much you will age too soon.'

She paused; then said softly, after a long look straight into his eyes.
'What avails it to talk? You must act.'

'What is required?' asked Astro in trembling tones, and turning pale.

'You must know a certain word, and you must anoint your skin with a
certain unguent.'

'Have you this unguent?'

'Yes.'

'And you know the word?'

She nodded.

'And then one can fly?'

'Try. You will find my method simpler than your mechanics.'

The single eye of the smith blazed with the madness of desire.

'Monna Cassandra, give me your unguent.'

She suppressed a laugh.

'You are a simpleton, Astro. Five minutes ago you called magic foolery;
now, it seems, you believe in it.'

Astro hung his head, convicted, but unrepentant.

'I wish to fly. I care little if I attain by mechanics or by miracles.
What I can endure no longer is waiting.'

The girl laid her hand on his shoulder.

'I see, I see. Truly, I pity you. It is clear your brain will crack if
you don't get to your flying. Good, then; I will give you the drug and I
will teach you the word. But you likewise, Astro, you must do what I ask
of you.'

'I will, Monna Cassandra. I will do anything. Speak.' The girl pointed
to the wet roof beyond the garden wall.

'Let me enter there.'

But Astro frowned and shook his head.

'Nay. I will do whatever you ask, saving only that.'

'And why not that?'

'I have promised my master to let none in.'

'But you go thither?'

'Yea.'

'What is there within?'

'No mystery, Monna Cassandra; nothing of moment. Machines, appliances,
books, manuscripts. Certain strange plants, beasts, creeping things.
Travellers bring them from distant lands. And there is one tree which
has been poisoned.'

'What? poisoned?'

'Ay. He has it for experiments; that he may know the effect poison has
upon plants.'

'Good Astro, tell me all you know of that tree.'

'There is naught to tell. Early in the spring season he bored him a hole
in its trunk, to the very core; and with a long thin needle he squirted
in some venom.'

'What strange experiments! And of what sort is the tree?'

'A peach-tree.'

'What followed? Was the fruit also poisoned?'

'It will be so when ripe.'

'Can you see in the peaches that they are poisoned?'

'No; and that is why he permits no entry, lest some one might eat the
fruit and die.'

'Have you the key?'

'Ay.'

'Good Astro, give it to me!'

'Monna Cassandra! Have I not sworn to him?'

'Give me the key; and I will compass it that to-night you shall
fly--this very night. See, this is the drug.'

She drew from her bosom a phial which contained a dark liquid; and
putting her face close to his, she whispered wheedlingly, 'What is it
you fear, simpleton? You say there are no mysteries. Well, then, let us
go and make sure. The key, Astro, the key!'

'No,' he replied, 'I will not let you enter; and I care nothing for your
secret. Leave me.'

'Coward!' cried the girl, fine scorn on her face; 'it is possible for
you to know the secret, and you dare not hear it! Now I see plainly he
is a sorcerer, and he tricks you as he would trick an infant!'

But neither could scorn move him; he turned away his head, listening
sullenly. Then Cassandra drew nearer again.

'Well, Astro, so be it. I will not enter. Only do you set the door ajar
and let me peep----'

'You will not go in?'

'No; only open and let me just look.'

At this he drew forth the key and unlocked the door.

Giovanni, rising softly and drawing nearer, saw a common peach-tree at
the far end of the little walled garden; under the dim green moonlight
the tree seemed weird and ill-omened.

Standing in the doorway, the girl looked about her with the wide eyes of
eager curiosity. Then she took a step forward. The smith held her back;
but she freed herself and slipped through his hands like a snake. He
again pushed her out, almost overthrowing her. But she recovered her
balance easily, and looked him full in the eyes. Her face pale, livid,
and contracted with rage, was terrifying; at that moment she truly
seemed a witch.

The smith clapped to the door, and without further speech retreated to
the house, she following him with her golden eyes. Presently she strode
hastily past Giovanni, and through the wicket into the road of the Porta
Vercellina. Once more silence reigned, and the mist thickened; all
things vanished in it.

Giovanni, left alone, closed his eyes painfully. Before him rose as in a
vision the awful tree, the heavy drops on its damp leaves, its poisoned
fruits, pallidly illuminated. And he thought of the words:--

'Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. For in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.'




BOOK III

THE POISONED FRUITS--1494


     'And the Serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For
     God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall
     be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.--GEN.
     iii. 4 and 5.

     'Faciendo un bucho con un succhiello dentro un albusciello, a
     chacciandovi arsenicho e risalgallo e sollimato stemperati con
     acqua arzente, a forza di fare e sua frutti velenosi.'--LEONARDO DA
     VINCI.

     (Having pierced the heart of a young tree, inject arsenic, a
     reagent and corrosive sublimate, diluted with alcohol, so as to
     envenom even the fruit.)


I

Beatrice, the duchess, used every Friday to bathe her hair, and then
tincture it with gold, after which she dried it in the sunshine. For her
convenience she had caused balustraded '_altane_,' or platforms, to be
erected on the roof of the splendid ducal villa of the Sforzesca, which
stood on the right bank of the Ticino, near the fortress of Vigevano,
among the fat pastures and the ever green water-side meadows of the
province of Lomellina. Here, then, she sat, patiently supporting the
blazing heat at an hour when even husbandmen and their oxen were wont to
creep into the shadow. She wore a _schiavinetta_--a loose white silk
wrapper without sleeves. On her head was a kind of straw sunshade, or
hat, from the opening in the top of which flowed out the broad masses of
her gilded and rippling hair. An olive-skinned Circassian slave was
moistening the hair with a sponge, fixed on the point of a spindle; and
a Tartar, slit-eyed and crooked, was combing it with an ivory comb.

The dye was made in May of the roots of walnut trees, saffron, ox-gall,
swallows' lime, ambergris, bears' claws, and the fat of lizards. Close
beside the duchess, and watched by herself, an infusion of musk roses
and precious spices was simmering in a long-necked retort, upon a tripod
over an invisible flame.

Both the waiting-maids were bathed in perspiration; even the duchess's
lapdog was ill at ease on this burning _altana_, and, panting and
lolling out his tongue, gazed reproachfully at his mistress, nor
responded as usual to the provocation of the monkey. The latter was
luxuriating in the heat, however, like the negro page, who held the
gemmed and jewelled mother-o'-pearl mirror.

Though the Lady Beatrice constantly endeavoured to compose countenance
and deportment to the severity becoming her rank, it was hard to believe
that she was nineteen, had been married three years, and had borne two
children. In the girlish roundness of her dark cheek, in the childish
dimple, the slender throat, the chin too plump; in the full lips tightly
compressed as if always tempted to pout; in the slight shoulders and
flat bosom; in the abrupt boyish movements, she appeared still a
schoolgirl, spoiled, wilful, restless and even selfish. Yet prudence and
intelligence shone from the steady, dark eyes; and the Venetian
ambassador, Marino Sanuto, most astute of statesmen, had written in his
private letters to his government that this girl was hard as flint, and
gave him far more trouble than did her husband, Il Moro; who indeed
showed his wisdom by obeying her about everything.

The dog barked angrily, and up the winding stair which led to the
_altana_ came laboriously an old woman habited like a widow. In one hand
she held a crutch, in the other a rosary; the wrinkles in her face might
have given her a reverend aspect, had not the withered mouth smiled
hypocritically, and the eyes sparkled with audacious cunning.

'Ugh, ugh! How detestable is old age! I could hardly drag myself hither.
May the Lord preserve youth and health to your Excellency,' said the old
woman, kissing the hem of the _schiavinetta_.

'Well, Monna Sidonia, is it ready?'

The crone drew from her pouch a carefully wrapped, closely-stoppered
phial, containing a turbid, whitish liquid,--the milk of a red goat and
of an ass, distilled with wild anise, asparagus, and white lilies.

'In good sooth, her Excellency should keep it two little days more in
good horse litter. Yet it can be used at once if needful; only first
strain it through a filter. Wet with it crumbs of stale bread, and then
be pleased to rub your noble countenance for such a period as would take
the reciting of three _credos_. In five weeks' time all swarthiness will
be removed, and pimples beside.'

'Hearken, old woman,' said Beatrice; 'in this lotion there are again,
mayhap, some of the abominable things used in black magic,--snakes' fat,
perchance, or plovers' blood; or powdered lizards, fried in a
frying-pan; such as there were in that unguent you gave me for withering
the hair in my cheek-moles. If it be so, tell me at once.'

'Your Excellency should not lend her ear to the calumnies of the
malignant. I work honestly, as my conscience dictates; but no one can do
without dirt sometimes. The magnificent Madonna Angelica, for example,
all last year washed her head with dogs' urine, so as to preserve her
hair, which was falling out; and thanked God and me it cured her.' Then,
bending down to the duchess's ear, she told the latest gossip:--how the
young wife of the Master of the Guild of the Salters, the lovely Madonna
Filiberta was deceiving her husband with a Spanish cavalier, and
diverting herself hugely.

'And doubtless,' said Beatrice, jestingly threatening with her finger,
''twas you who brought the poor thing to it, you old bawd!'

'Does your Excellency call her _poor_? Nay, she sings me her thanks
every hour. Now she knows the difference between the kiss of a spouse
and the kiss of a lover.'

'But the sin? Doth not her conscience bite her?'

'Her conscience? Madam, I hold the sin of love the work of nature. And a
few drops of holy water can wash the sin away. Madonna Filiberta is but
giving her spouse a Roland for his Oliver.'

'Is your meaning that likewise the husband----'

'Say it for certain, I do not--but sure it is that all married men harp
on one string. There is none of them but would sooner have a single hand
than a single wife.'

The duchess laughed. 'Ah, Monna Sidonia, Monna Sidonia, there's no
tripping you! But where do you learn all these things?'

'Believe the word of an old woman; what I tell you is gospel truth. And
in matters of conscience I know the difference between a beam and a
mote. All fruit gets ripe in its season. If she have not her fill of
love when she be young, a woman will fall into such longing when she is
old, that she will go straight into the claws of the devil.'

'You preach like a doctor of theology.'

'Nay, I am unlearned; but I speak from my heart, and I tell your
Excellency that youth comes but once in life; for what the devil--Lord
forgive me!--is the use of us women when we are old? Perhaps to throw
charcoal on the brazier, and to count the pots and the pans in the
kitchen. Not for nothing says the proverb.

     "La giovane mangia, la vecchia s'ingozza."[2]

  [2] _Ingozzare_, to swallow; also, to bear an affront meekly.

Beauty without love is like matins without a paternoster.'

'What! say that over again!' laughed the duchess.

The old woman, thinking she had now trifled enough, again bent to the
lady's ear and whispered. Beatrice ceased to laugh, her face darkened.
She dismissed her attendants, excepting the little blackamoor who had no
Italian. Around them was only the still and glowing air, which seemed to
have paled under the fury of the heat.

'Folly!' answered the duchess; 'such chattering is of no moment.'

'Signora, I saw with my eyes, I heard with my ears. Others will tell you
the like.'

'Were there many persons?'

'Ten thousand. The piazza before the Castle of Pavia was thronged.'

'What heard you?'

'When Madonna Isabella came forth bearing the little Francesco there was
a beating of hands, a waving of caps, and a many who shed tears. "_Viva_
Isabella of Aragon," they cried, "_Viva_ Gian Galeazzo and his heir, our
true and legitimate lord! Death to the usurpers of his throne!"'

Beatrice frowned. 'Those were the very words?'

'Ay; but there was worse.'

'Speak--fear nothing.'

'They cried--my tongue, _Signora mia_, refuses--but they cried "Death to
the Robbers!"'

Beatrice shivered; mastering herself, however, she asked calmly, 'Was
there more?'

'Of a truth, I know not how to tell it to your Excellency.'

'Haste thee, I would know all.'

'Believe me, madam, they said that the most noble duke, Ludovico il
Moro, the guardian and the benefactor of Gian Galeazzo, holds his nephew
in the fortress of Pavia, and surrounds him with assassins and spies.
Then they demanded that the duke himself should come out to them, but
Madonna Isabella answered that he lay sick.'

And again Monna Sidonia whispered in the duchess's ear.

'But you are distraught, you old hag,' cried the lady. 'Beware, lest I
have you thrown from this roof, so that not even a crow can get your
bones together.'

The threat did not frighten Monna Sidonia. Beatrice also soon calmed.

'I don't believe a word of it,' she said, observing the crone furtively.

'As you please, Excellency,' answered the other, shrugging lean
shoulders, 'but nothing can prevent my words from being true. See you,'
she continued insinuatingly, 'you make a small figure of wax, and you
put a swallow's heart in at the right side, at the left its liver, then
you pierce it with a needle, uttering charms the while; and he will die
of a slow death, nor is there doctor who can save him.'

'Silence!' commanded the duchess.

The hag again devoutly kissed the hem of the _schiavinetta_. 'Your Grace
is my sun. I love you overmuch, 'tis my worst fault.' She paused, then
added, 'It can be done also without witchcraft.'

The duchess was silent, but she looked at the woman curiously.

'As I came by the palace garden,' resumed Monna Sidonia, dryly, 'I saw
the gardener collecting fair ripe peaches in a basket, a present
doubtless for Messer Gian Galeazzo.' Another pause, and she continued,
'And likewise in the garden of Messer Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine,
there are fair ripe peaches, but empoisoned.'

'Empoisoned?'

'Ay, Monna Cassandra, my niece, saw----' And again she whispered.

The duchess made no answer. By this time her hair was dry, and she rose,
threw off the _schiavinetta_, and descended to the apartment known as
the wardrobe. Here were three huge presses; the first, large as that in
some great sacristy, contained the eighty-four dresses which she had
found time to acquire in the three years of her married life; some so
stiff with gold and jewels that they could stand on the floor by
themselves, others diaphanous, imponderous as the web of a spider. In
the second press were riding-dresses, and all furniture for hawking. In
the third, essences, waters, washes, unguents, powders for the teeth of
white coral and seed-pearls, innumerable vases, retorts, rectified
alembics, crucibles, in short, a complete laboratory of female alchemy;
precious cedar-wood chests, also, covered with paintings and embroidery.
From one of these the waiting-woman drew forth a chemise of the purest
whiteness. The room filled with a scent of lavender, oriental iris, and
dried Damascus roses.

While she dressed, Beatrice conversed about the trimming of a new gown
just received by courier from her sister, Isabella d'Este, the
Marchioness of Mantua. The sisters vied with each other in elegance, and
Beatrice paid a court spy to keep her informed of all the novelties in
the Mantuan wardrobe.

The duchess attired herself in her favourite robe, which, striped with
gold satin and green velvet, made her seem taller than she was. The
open-work sleeves were tied with bands of grey silk, slashed in the
French mode, and showing the white puffings of the undergarment. Her
hair was plaited and confined in a gold net and fine gold cord, which
was clasped by a scorpion of rubies.


II

She was in the habit of spending so long a time at the morning toilette
that the duke said he could as quickly have fitted a merchant ship for
the Indies. On this occasion, however, hearing a distant sound of horns
and the baying of hounds, she remembered that she had ordered a hunt,
and consequently hurried. When dressed she paid a passing visit to the
chamber of her dwarfs, which, in imitation of the royal play-room of
Isabella d'Este, she nicknamed 'the Apartment of the Giants.' Here
everything was arranged for a population of pygmies: chairs, beds,
furniture, ladders, even a chapel with a toy altar at which daily
service was read by a learned dwarf named Janachi in archiepiscopal
robes and mitre. Among the 'giants' was always much noise: laughter and
weeping, the cries of various and eerie voices from hunchbacks, apes,
parrots, idiots, Tartars, buffoons, and other absurd creatures, with
whom the youthful duchess sometimes passed whole days playing. To-day
she looked in merely to inquire after the health of a little negro named
Nannino, lately sent from Venice. His skin had been so black, that in
the words of his former mistress, 'Nothing more exquisite could be
desired,' but now that he had fallen ill it had become apparent that his
hue was not entirely natural, for a coating, black and shining like
lacquer, was peeling off and causing great chagrin to Beatrice. However,
she loved him in spite of his growing fairness, and hearing with
distress that he was likely to die, she gave orders to have him
christened as quickly as possible.

Descending the staircase, she met Morgantina, her favourite female fool,
who was young, pretty, and so whimsical that she 'could rouse even the
dead to laughter.' She stole and hid booty like a magpie, but if spoken
to kindly would confess her crimes, and was simple and innocent as a
child. Sometimes, however, she fell into fits of melancholy, wailing for
her lost son (who had never existed). This morning she was sitting on
the stair hugging her knees and sobbing distractedly. Beatrice patted
her on the head.

'Cease, little one, cease,' she said, 'be good.'

The fool, raising her childish blue eyes streaming with tears, made
reply, 'Oh! oh! oh! they have taken my baby away! And, O Lord, why? What
harm had he done?'

Without another word the duchess went down into the courtyard where the
huntsmen were awaiting her.


III

Surrounded by outriders, falconers, beaters, equerries, pages, and
court-ladies, Beatrice sat her slender dark bay Arab--a superb creature
from Gonzaga's stables--like an expert horseman. 'A true queen of
Amazons,' thought her husband proudly, as he came out of the pleached
alley before the palace to watch his consort's start.

Behind the duchess rode a falconer in a sumptuous livery, embroidered
with gold. A snow-white Cyprus falcon, a gift from the Sultan, its
golden hood glittering with emeralds, and little bells attached to its
claws, sat on his left hand.

Beatrice was in lively humour; she looked at her husband with a smile,
but when he said--

'Be wary! the horse is mettlesome,' she signed to her companions and
darted off at a gallop, first along the road, then over the open fields,
across ditches, hillocks, and trenches. Her retinue fell behind; but
Beatrice was attended by a huge wolf-hound, and by her side, on a black
Castilian mare, the gayest and boldest of her maidens, rode Madonna
Lucrezia Crivelli. The duke was by no means indifferent to this lady,
and as he watched her and Beatrice side by side in this mad gallop, it
would have perplexed him to say which of the two he admired the more.
However, he certainly experienced an invincible anxiety for his young
wife, and when she leaped a deep chasm, he closed his eyes and caught
his breath. Often he had reproved her for these follies, but had not the
heart to forbid them; deficient himself in physical courage, he was
proud of the daring of his lady.

The party descended into the ravine and disappeared among the osier
thickets of the low banks of the Ticino, the breeding place of ducks,
woodcock, and herons.

Then the duke returned to his _studiolo_, where Messer Bartolomeo Calco,
his chief secretary, who had charge of the embassies from the foreign
courts, was awaiting commands.


IV

Sitting in his high-backed armchair, Ludovico Sforza softly stroked his
smooth-shaved chin with a white and well-kept hand. His handsome face
wore that expression of perfect candour which is acquired by past
masters in political trickery; his high-bridged aquiline nose, and
subtly writhen lips recalled his father Francesco, the great
_Condottiere_; though if Francesco were, as the poets said, at once
lion and fox, Ludovico was merely fox. He was attired in pale blue silk,
puffed and embroidered; his smooth hair covered ears and brow like a
wig, and a gold chain dangled on his breast; in word and gesture he was
uniformly courteous and urbane.

'Have you certain intelligence, Messer Bartolomeo, of the departure of
the French army from Lyons?'

'None, your Excellency. Every evening they say "to-morrow," every
morning they say "to-night." The king wastes himself in unwarlike
amusements.'

'Who is his first favourite?'

'Many names are mentioned, the taste of his Majesty is variable.'

'Write to Count Belgioioso that I send him thirty--no--forty or fifty
thousand ducats to spend in new donatives, let him spare nothing. We
must draw this king out of Lyons by golden chains. And, Bartolomeo--but
repeat this not--it were well to send his Majesty the portraits of some
of our fairest ladies. By the way, is the letter ready?'

'It is, Signore.'

'Show it to me.'

Il Moro rubbed his white hands for pleasure. Every time he contemplated
his huge web of policy, he felt an agreeable stirring at heart; he loved
the dangerous game. Nor did he blame himself for having summoned the
foreigners, the northern barbarians, into Italy; his enemies had forced
him to this extreme measure, chiefly the consort of Gian Galeazzo,
Isabella of Aragon, who openly accused him of having usurped the throne
of his nephew. Yet it had not been till her father, Alfonso of Naples,
had intervened, threatening war and dethronement, that Ludovico had
appealed to Charles VIII. King of France.

'Inscrutable are thy ways, O Lord!' thought the duke piously, while his
secretary searched for the letter in a pile of papers; 'the salvation of
my kingdom, of Italy, perhaps of all Europe, is in the hands of this
abortion of nature, this libertine, this witless boy, whom they name the
Most Christian King of France; before whom we, the heirs of the glory of
the Sforzas, must crouch, and creep, and play the pander. But such are
politics; he who hunts with wolves must howl with them.'

He read over the letter, which seemed to him sufficiently well
expressed.

'May the Lord bless thy crusading army, O most Christian,' so it ran;
'the gates of Ausonia stand open to thee. Hesitate not to enter in
triumph, a new Hannibal! The peoples of Italy yearn to bow beneath thy
gentle yoke, O anointed of the Most High....'

So far the duke had read when a humpbacked, bald, old man looked in at
the door. Ludovico smiled, but motioned to him to wait. The head
vanished, and the door closed again softly; but the secretary saw he had
lost his master's attention. Messer Bartolomeo therefore concluded the
letter and went out. The duke cautiously stepped to the door on the tips
of his toes, and called softly--

'Bernardo! Hist! Bernardo!'

'Here, my lord.' And the court poet, Bernardo Bellincioni, advanced with
an air of mystery and servility, and he would have fallen on his knees
to kiss the duke's hand: the latter, however, restrained him.

'Well? Well?'

'All is right, my lord.'

'Is she brought to bed?'

'Last night saw her released from her burden.'

'Felicitously? Or shall I send my physician?'

'Nay, the mother is doing perfectly.'

'Glory be to God! And the child?'

'Perfect.'

'Male or female?'

'A man-child. And with a voice--! Fair hair as his mother's; but the
eyes black, burning and quick like those of your Grace. The princely
blood shows itself. A little Hercules! Madonna Cecilia is beside herself
with joy; and bade me inquire the name that will please your
Excellency.'

'I have considered that. We will call him Caesar. What think you of
that?'

''Tis a fine name; well mouthing, and ancient. Cesare Sforza! A name
meant for a hero.'

'Well now--about the husband?'

'The illustrious Count Bergamini is good and courteous as ever.'

'Admirable man!' cried the duke.

'Your Excellency will permit me to pronounce him a man of rare virtue.
Such men are to seek nowadays. If the gout permit, he would desire to
sup with your Worship, to testify to his respect.'

The Countess Cecilia of whom they spoke had long been Ludovico's
mistress. But Beatrice, his bride, daughter of Ercole d'Este, Duke of
Ferrara, having discovered the amour, became furiously jealous; and by
threats of return to her paternal home, she induced her lord not only to
swear better observance of his conjugal fidelity, but also to bestow
Cecilia in wedlock. The husband selected by Ludovico was the ancient and
complaisant Count Bergamini.

Bellincioni, taking a small paper from his pocket, presented it to the
duke. It was a sonnet in honour of the newly born:--

     'Thou weepest, Phoebus! Why this silver rain?
      Because this day upon the amazèd skies,
      Lo! I have seen a second sun arise,
      Before whose splendours all my glories wane.'
      'This is a tale for laughter!' 'Nay, for pain,
      Truth suffers no derision from the wise.'
      'Then tell me more, and still my loud surprise,
      That queries whence this newer king shall reign.'
      'The offspring of a Moor, he makes his nest
      In sweet Cecilia's arms--I saw his light
      Shine through the brooding feathers of her love;
      Now, must I hide me in the cloudy west,
      Eclipsed by one more radiant and more bright,
      Who shall greater God than Phoebus prove.'

The duke bestowed a silver piece upon the poet.

'Bernardo, let it not slip your memory that Saturday is the birthday of
the duchess.'

Bellincioni hastily fumbled in the folds of his courtly but threadbare
raiment, and from some recess therein drew forth a whole sheaf of
tumbled papers; and among grandiloquent odes on the death of Madonna
Angelina's falcon, and the disorder of Signor Paravicino's dappled
Hungarian mare, found the verses required.

'Here be three for my lord to choose from,' he said. 'I vow by the
sacred footprints of Pegasus, you will be content.'

In those times sovereigns used their court poets as musical instruments,
to serenade not their mistresses only, but also their wives; fashion
demanded that between husband and wife at least platonic love should be
assumed.

The duke ran through the verses curiously; though he could not himself
string two lines together. In the first sonnet he found two lines to his
taste, where the husband turns to his wife with these words:--

     'Where thy light spittle falls, flowers gem the earth
      As dews of spring bring violets to birth.'

In the second the poet, comparing Madonna Beatrice with the goddess
Diana, asserted that boars and stags felt happiness in falling by the
hand of so fair a huntress. The third poem pleased Il Moro better than
all the rest. It was put into the mouth of Dante, who prays that God may
permit him to return to earth, since there he would once more find his
Beatrice in the person of the Duchess of Milan.

'O great Jove!' cried Alighieri, 'since thou hast again given her to the
earth that she may gladden it with the light of love, permit me also to
be with her, and to see him whose felicity she is, and whose life she
maketh most proud and glad.'

Il Moro graciously slapped the poet on his back, and promised him some
scarlet Florentine cloth at ten _soldi_ the _braccio_ for his winter
cloak. Bernardo, by no means satisfied, made many bowings and bendings,
and obtained at last the promise of some fox skin linings. He explained
that his furs had become by long wear as hairless and transparent as
vermicelli drying in the sun.

'Last winter,' he continued, 'I was so cold that I was ready to burn not
only my own staircase but the wooden shoes of St. Francis.'

The duke laughed, and promised him firewood, and Bellincioni instantly
improvised a laudatory quatrain.

     'When to thy servants thou dost promise bread
      Like God thou giv'st them heavenly manna,
      For which great Phoebus and the choir of nine
      Chant, noble Moor, to thee Hosanna.'

'You seem in the vein to-day, Bernardo. Hearken, I require yet another
poem.'

'Erotic?'

'Ay; and impassioned.'

'For the duchess?'

'By no means. But, beware you speak not of this!'

'My lord is pleased to insult me. Have I ever----'

'Not yet.'

'I am dumb as any fish,' and he blinked his eyes obsequiously and
mysteriously. 'Impassioned? That I understand. But of what kind?
Grateful? Imploring?'

'The last.'

The poet drew his brows together with an air of grave solicitude.

'Wedded?'

'A maid.'

'Good. But I shall need the name.'

'What on earth matters the name?'

'Can't do imploring without the name.'

'Madonna Lucrezia.--You have nothing ready?'

'Truly, my lord, I have; but something fresh would please better. Permit
me the seclusion of the next apartment; 'twill be the affair of a
moment. Already I feel the rhymes crawling in my head.'

Just then a page announced 'Messer Leonardo da Vinci,' and Bellincioni
disappeared through one door as Leonardo entered at the other.


V

After the opening salutations the duke and the artist fell to discussing
the new canal which was to connect the Sesia and the Ticino, and by a
branching network of trenches was to irrigate the meadows and pastures
of the Lomellina. Leonardo was superintendent of the excavations for the
canal, though he had not the title of Ducal Architect; neither was he
called the Court Painter, but only the _Sonatore di lire_, a title which
gave him precedence of the court poets like Bellincioni, and had been
accorded to him because on arrival in Milan he had presented Sforza with
a silver lyre, made by his own hand in the shape of a horse's head.

Having explained his design for the canal, Leonardo requested of the
duke that he might be put in possession of the further moneys necessary
for the prosecution of the work.

'How much?' asked Ludovico.

'Five hundred and six ducats for every league: in all, fifteen thousand
one hundred and eighty-seven.'

Ludovico frowned, remembering the fifty thousand he had just devoted to
the corruption of French nobles.

'Too much, too much, Messer Leonardo. You would ruin me. It is
impossible, unexampled. Why these boundless designs? I might consult
Bramante, you know, who is also an expert in construction. He works more
cheaply.'

Leonardo shrugged his shoulders.

'As you please, my lord. Entrust it to Bramante.'

'Nay, be not offended. I have no thought of slighting you.' And they
fell to bargaining.

'_Va bene, va bene!_' said the duke at last, deferring the conclusion of
the agreement; and he took up Leonardo's sketch-book and turned over the
unfinished drawings, chiefly architectural and mechanical: the artist,
somewhat impatient, had to furnish explanations and commentaries.

On one sheet there was a huge mausoleum, an artificial mountain crowned
with a colonnaded temple, its dome pierced like that of the Pantheon; on
the next, the exact calculations and the ground-plan for the edifice,
with details for the disposition of stairs, cells, corridors; the whole
being destined for the reception of five hundred sepulchral urns.

'What is this?' asked the duke; 'when and for whom have you designed
it?'

'For no one. 'Tis a fantasy.'

'Strange fantasy!' commented Ludovico shaking his head; ''tis a cemetery
for the gods or the Titans, like a building in a city of dreams.'

The next sketch showed the plan for a town with the streets in tiers,
one above the other, the upper for the rich, the lower for the poor, for
animals, and for refuse; a town to be built in conformity with natural
laws; for men without a conscience to be offended by glaring inequality.

'Not so bad!' observed the duke. 'You think it would be practicable?'

'Certainly,' said Leonardo brightening, 'I have long wished your
Excellency could be induced to try it, say in one of the suburbs. Five
thousand houses would suffice for thirty thousand people; they would be
decently divided, whereas now they herd together in dirt and distemper,
disseminating the seeds of disease. My plan, Signore, if literally
carried out, would provide the finest city in the world.'

The duke's laughter checked the enthusiast.

'You are finely crazed, Messer Leonardo. If I gave you the reins you
would turn the State topsy-turvy. You do not see that the most
submissive of slaves would resent your two-storeyed streets, would spit
upon your boasted cleanliness--your pipes and conduits--your finest city
in the world, _perdio_; and would flee back to their lousy old towns
again, where, as you say, they have a good modicum of filth and
distemper, but no insults to their self-respect. Well, and this?' he
added, pointing to another drawing.

This proved to be a design for a 'house of accommodation,' with secret
rooms, doors, and passages, so disposed that the visitors should not
meet each other.

'Ah! this is admirable!' cried the duke. 'I am weary of the robbings and
the murderings in these places. Here there would be order and security.
I will build at once on your plan.' He smiled and added, 'Bravo! Bravo!
I see nothing is beneath your ingenuity. _A proposito!_ I remember once
reading of the "Ear of Dionysius," a construction at Syracuse, which
permitted the tyrant in his palace to hear the speech of his prisoners
in the quarry. Think you it were possible to construct an Ear in my
palace?'

As he spoke the duke had stammered and blushed a little, but he
recovered himself immediately: before such a man as this artist no shame
was required. And Leonardo, without trenching on morals, eagerly
discussed the acoustics of the notion.

Then Bellincioni reappeared, announcing that his sonnet was ready and
passing beautiful; at which Leonardo took flight, having accepted the
duke's invitation to supper.

Ludovico requested the poet to read his work. The salamander, so the
sonnet ran, lives in the fire, but a lady, of virgin ice, has her
dwelling in the lover's fiery heart. The concluding quatrain seemed to
the duke surprisingly tender:--

     'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,
      But singing brings my torture no relief;
      Love with his laughter blows the flame of grief,
      And mocking cries, "Extinguish it with tears."'


VI

While waiting till his consort should have returned from the chase, the
duke took a walk through his domain. He inspected the stables, built
like a Greek temple, with columns, porticos, and doubly-lighted windows;
the splendid dairy, where he tasted junkets and new-made cheese; then,
passing numberless hay-barns and sheds, came to the farm and the
cattle-yards. Here every detail rejoiced his heart; the sound of the
milk falling from the udders of his favourite Languedoc cow; the
newly-littered sow's motherly gruntings; the smell of honey from the
swarming hives. A smile of satisfaction illumined his dark face; truly
his home was like a filled goblet! He returned to the house and waited
under the gallery. It was towards evening, but not yet the hour of
sunset; from the water-meadows of the Ticino came the pungent freshness
of the grass. The duke cast his eyes slowly over his estate; pastures,
meadows, fields watered by a network of ditches, planted with long rows
of apple, and pear, and mulberry trees, trellised with the hanging
garlands of the vines. From Mortara to Abbiategrasso and further to the
very horizon, where in the creeping twilight the snows of Monte Rosa
gleamed with unearthly radiance, the boundless plain of Lombardy
flowered like the Paradise of God.

'I thank thee, Lord,' said the devout duke raising his eyes heavenward.
'I thank Thee for all. What more is there that I could desire of Thee?
Once a barren and leafless wilderness stretched on every side, but I and
Leonardo have made these canals, watered this land, and now every blade
of grass, every ear of corn blesses me as I bless thee, O Lord!'

Then was heard the tongue of the hounds, and the cry of the huntsmen,
and above the vines was seen a red lure, a formless object with
partridge wings, for bringing back the falcons. Ludovico and his _major
domo_ went the round of the tables to be sure that all was ready for the
evening feast. Presently the duchess made her entry, and then the guests
trooped in, among them Leonardo. A grace was recited, and they sat down
to table.

The first course consisted of artichokes sent by express from Genoa, fat
eels and carp from the Mantua ponds, gift from Isabella d'Este, and a
jelly of the breasts of good capons. The company ate with their fingers
and with knives, forks being reserved for state occasions. Certain tiny
golden ones with crystal prongs were, however, accorded to the ladies at
the fruit course. The munificent host assiduously pressed his guests to
eat; and as none ever blushed to be hungry, the food and the liquors
circulated freely and long.

Lucrezia had her seat beside the duchess, and the admiring eyes of the
duke rested on them both. It pleased him that his wife should honour the
maiden of his fancy, passing dainties from her own plate to the girl's,
and caressing her hand with that expansive and playful tenderness which
young women sometimes exhibit towards one another.

The conversation centred in the hunt, and Beatrice told how the sudden
burst of a stag from the thicket had almost thrown her from her horse.
Much laughter followed when the fool Gioda, the boaster, told of the
boar he had slain, singly, and with superhuman boldness and dexterity.
The animal was a tame pig, cast in his path designedly, and the carcase
was brought in and exhibited. The fool displayed excesses of rage at
these aspersions; but his fury and simplicity were equally assumed. He
knew a bad jest from a good one.

By degrees the laughter grew louder, and abundant potations reddened all
faces; the ladies surreptitiously loosened their stay-laces. The
cellarers brought round light Cyprus wine, both red and white, mulled at
the fire, and spiced with pistachios, cinnamon, and cloves. When the
duke called for wine, his command was passed out from one to the other
of the stewards in a solemn chant, as of a church function; a goblet was
brought from the buffet, and the chief Seneschal dipped a talisman--an
unicorn on a gold chain--into the liquor. If it were poisoned the horn
of this animal was to turn black and to shed drops of gore. Similar
talismans, of toad's-stone and serpent's-tongue, were put in the
salt-cellars. Count Bergamini, Cecilia's husband, had been given the
seat of honour, and was especially gay to-night, in spite of age and
gout. Pointing to the unicorn, he cried:--

'I fancy not the King of France has such a horn as your most illustrious
Excellency!'

'Hee! hee! hee!' crowed Janachi the hunchback, shaking his rattle and
clanging the bells of his motley cap, surmounted by ass's ears. 'Believe
him, nuncle, believe him!'

And the duke good-humouredly threatened the jester with his finger. Now
silver trumpets blared to announce the entry of the roasts--boar's head
and peacocks. Last came a pasty in the figure of a castle; from its
walls sounded a trumpet, and when the crust was cut a dwarf in parrot's
plumage sprang out and hopped round the table, till captured and
imprisoned in a gilded cage. Thence he screamed out a paternoster.

'Messer,' said the duchess to her lord, 'to what joyful event must we
attribute the unexpected good fare of this feast?'

Il Moro made no answer, but exchanged sly glances with Count Bergamini.
Cecilia's husband understood that the celebration was for the new-born
Cesare.

They sat over the boar's head for more than an hour, making no economy
of time, and remembering the proverb, 'At table none groweth old.' At
the close of the repast, Fra Talpone caused general hilarity. He was a
monk of great corpulence, quarrelled for by princes, being renowned for
voracity. He had greatly diverted His Holiness the Pope by devouring the
third part of a bishop's cassock, cut in pieces, and steeped in vinegar.
Now at a signal from the duke a huge platter of '_buzecchio_'--tripe
stewed with quinces--was placed before the friar. He sighed, crossed
himself, rolled up his sleeves, and consumed it with relish and
incredible rapidity.

     'If thou had'st dined with Christ when He divided
      The loaves and fishes miracle provided,
      No morsel had remained a dog to fill,
      Whilst thou unsatisfied had'st hungered still,'

sang Bellincioni on the spur of the moment. Roars of laughter broke from
the company. Only the face of the lonely and taciturn Leonardo retained
its expression of resigned _ennui_.

When the concluding dish of gilded oranges had been served on silver
plates, and handed with Malvoisie, then Antonio Camella da Pistoja, a
court poet, recited an ode in which the duke was addressed by the Arts
and Sciences and Elements in these terms:--

'We were slaves; thou camest, and we are free. _Evviva il Moro_.'


VII

After supper the guests adjourned to the garden called 'The Paradise';
laid out in geometrical figures with shorn edgings of box, alleys of
laurel and myrtle, shaded walks, labyrinths, loggias, and woven arbours.
Rugs and silken pillows were thrown on a lawn freshened by a glittering
fountain. The ladies and their cavaliers grouped themselves with
relaxing ceremony before the little court theatre, and an act of the
'_Miles Gloriosus_' of Plautus was performed. It was tedious, but the
audience, out of reverence for the ancients, feigned attention. After
the comedy the young people played ball, tennis, and blind-man's-buff,
running about, laughing and catching each other like children among the
luxuriant and fragrant roses and orange-trees, while the elders were at
dice, draughts, and chess. Others of the company gathered in a close
circle on the steps of the fountain, and told _novelli_ after the
fashion of the youths and ladies of the _Decameron_.

Then they danced to the tune of the favourite air of 'Lorenzo dei
Medici':--

           'Quant e bella giovinezza
            Ma si fugge tuttavia
            Chi vuol esser lieto, sia
            Di doman non c'è certezza.'

     (Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness;
     He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)

After the dance Madonna Diana, a gentle girl with a pale and lovely
face, sang to the low notes of the lute a plaint on unrequited love. As
by enchantment the noise and the laughter ceased, and all listened with
thoughtful and reminiscent attention. It was long before any one spoke,
and after the ending of the song the hush was broken only by the quiet
rustling of the fountain. But presently the voices and the mirth and the
music awoke again, and were to be heard till late at night, when the
laurels were lighted by fireflies, and in the darkened heaven reigned
the new-born moon. And over all the Paradiso floated a soft air, rich
with perfume of orange-blossom; and still trembled the notes of the
Medicean canzone:--

     'Chi vuol esser lieto, sia
      Di doman non c'è certezza.


VIII

The duke saw a glimmer of light in one of the four palace towers. It was
the lamp of Messer Ambrogio da Rosate, prime astrologer, and a member of
the Secret Council, who was observing the conjunction of Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn in the sign of Aquarius, a matter of profound significance
for the house of Sforza.

As if pricked in his memory, the duke hastily saluted Madonna Lucrezia,
with whom he had been engaged in tender discourse, and entered the
palace. He looked at the clock, and having awaited the precise minute
and second enjoined by the astrologer, swallowed a rhubarb pill, and
consulted a calendar in which he read the following note:--

'_August 5th._--Eight minutes past ten of the evening, pray heartily on
your knees, after folding your hands and raising your eyes to Heaven.'

Fearing to be late, and so miss the prescription's efficacy, he hurried
to the chapel, unlighted save by a single lamp before a picture. The
duke loved the picture; it was by Leonardo, and represented Cecilia,
Countess of Bergamini, arrayed like the Madonna, blessing a
hundred-petalled rose. He counted eight minutes by the hour-glass, sank
on his knees, folded his hands, and recited the _Confiteor_. He prayed
long and fervently, his eyes on the picture.

'Mother of God,' he murmured, 'protect, save, and have mercy on me, on
my son Massimiliano, and Cesare, the newly-born. I commend unto thee
Beatrice, my consort, and Madonna Cecilia. And likewise Gian Galeazzo,
my nephew, for thou see'st my heart, and knowest that I wish no evil to
my nephew, though it may be that his death would set free not only my
state, but all Italy.'

Here he remembered the proof of his right to his throne which he had
obtained from the jurisconsult, and which stated that his elder brother
(father of Gian Galeazzo) having been born unto Francesco Sforza, the
condottiere, before he became Francesco Sforza and Duke of Milan,
whereas Ludovico was born unto the said Francesco _after_ he had become
duke--the younger not the elder was obviously the heir to the ducal
dignities of the common father.

At this moment, however, the decision seemed to Ludovico rather
ingenious than convincing. He hesitated to put it before the Mother of
God, contenting himself thus:--

'If in anything I have sinned or shall sin before thee, O Queen of
Heaven, thou knowest that I do so not for myself but for the good of my
people and of Italy. Mediate for me with God, and I will glorify thee by
the building in splendour of the cathedral in this town of Milan, and of
the Certosa at Pavia, and of other glorious monuments.'

After his prayer, candle in hand, he went toward his bedchamber, passing
through the dark rooms of the sleeping palace. In one of them, however,
he encountered Madonna Lucrezia.

'Truly, the god of Love favours me!' he thought.

'Signore!' exclaimed the girl; her voice broke, she would have thrown
herself on her knees before him, as she added, 'have pity on me, my
lord!'

And she told him that her brother Matteo Crivelli, chief of the
chamberlains, a man of abandoned life but whom she devotedly loved, had
lost at play great sums of the public money.

'Fear not, madonna! I will save your brother.'

He was silent for a moment, and added with a deep sigh:--

'And you too, O madonna, will you not be to me less cruel?'

She looked questioningly at him with serene and innocent eyes.

'I do not understand you, signore. What is your meaning?'

Her modesty rendered her yet fairer.

'It means, my sweet,' he said, throwing his arm almost roughly round
her, 'it means--but, Lucrezia, have you not seen that I love you?'

'Loose me! Let me go! What do you, signore! Madonna Beatrice----'

'Shall not know!' said the duke.

'No, my lord, no. She is so good, so generous to me. Leave me, for
pity's sake--'

'I will save your brother--do all your desire--be your slave. Only have
pity on me.'

And half-sincere in his passion and his tears, he murmured in trembling
tones those lines of the poet's:--

     'I sing, poor swan, of my consumèd years,
      But singing brings my torture no relief;
      Love with his laughter blows the flame of grief,
      And mocking cries, "Extinguish it with tears."'

'Let me go! Let me go!' said the girl desperately.

But he bent over her, feeling the freshness of her breath, the perfume
of violet and musk, and forcibly kissed her on the lips. For one moment
Lucrezia languished in his embrace, then, with a despairing cry, broke
from him and fled.


IX

Having reached the nuptial apartment, he found the lamp extinguished,
and Beatrice already reposing in the huge, mausoleum-like couch on a
dais in the middle of the floor under a blue silk baldachin. It was
adorned with silver curtains, and a coverlet, costly as the vestment of
a priest, of cloth of gold and pearls.

'Bice,' he whispered caressingly; 'Bice, dost thou sleep?' and he would
have saluted her, but she repulsed him.

'Bice--why is this?'

'Leave me in peace; I am fain of sleep.'

'But why, dear one, why? If thou knew'st how I adore thee!'

'Yes, yes, I know you adore us all together. Your consort, and Cecilia,
and _perdio_! the Muscovy slave-woman, the red-haired fool whom you
kissed in the obscurer angle of my wardrobe room!'

''Twas a jest.'

'A jest I care not for.'

'Alas, Bice, these many days thou hast been harsh to me! Well, I confess
it--I am guilty; 'twas a scurvy jest--a caprice.'

'Your caprices, my lord, are many.'

She turned towards him angrily. 'How is it you have no shame? Why, why
these lies? Do I not know you?--read you to the soul? I would not have
you think this jealousy; but I will not, hear you, my lord?--I _will
not_ be one among your lemans.'

'I swear to thee, Bice, I have loved none save thee. By my soul's
eternal weal, I swear it.'

She was silent, surprised less by his words than by the tone in which
they were uttered. He was not wholly lying. The more he deceived her the
more he felt he loved her, as if passion were inflamed by fear, qualms
of conscience, pity, and remorse.

'Pardon, Bice, pardon,' he implored; 'consider my love for thee----'

She submitted herself; and as he embraced her, invisible in the
darkness, he remembered serene and innocent eyes, and a perfume of
freshness, of violet and musk; the two loves confused themselves in an
exquisite sensation.

'Truly to-day thou art something like a lover!' she said with inward
pride.

'Of a truth, dear one; it is still as it was in our first days----'

'Foolishness!' cried Beatrice laughing; 'Fie on this trifling. Rather
should'st thou be thinking of deeper matters. It seems as though _his_
health were mending.'

'Nay, 'tis but few days since Luigi Marliani assured me there was no
hope for him,' replied the duke; ''tis true we have now a little
amendment, but it will not be for long; he is doomed beyond remission.'

'Who can tell?' urged Beatrice; 'he is over-tended. Of a truth,
Ludovico, I marvel at your patience. You bear insults like a sheep. You
say "The power is in our hands," but were it not better to renounce
power at once than to tremble for it night and day like thieves; to lick
the dust before that haughty bastard who is the King of France; to be
slaves at the mercy of the impudent Alfonso; to weary ourselves in
propitiating that perfidious sorceress of Aragon! They say she is
pregnant again: a new serpent will come forth from that cursed nest. And
to fare thus for our whole lives! Consider, Ludovico, for our whole
lives! And you call that having the power in our own hands!'

'But the physicians constantly aver,' repeated the duke, 'that this
malady is incurable; sooner or later----'

'Ay, 'tis later then. For ten years he hath been dying.'

There was a silence. Suddenly she threw her beautiful arm round his
neck, and drawing herself to him, she whispered in his ear--words which
made him shudder.

'Bice! may Christ and His most holy Mother pardon thee! Never--dost heed
me?--never again speak to me of that.'

'You are afraid, perhaps? Would you wish _me_ to try?'

He did not answer, but asked presently:--

'Of what thinkest thou?'

'My lord,' she answered, 'I am thinking about peaches.'

'Ay; I have bidden the gardener send thee of the ripest.'

'I care not for them. My thought was of the peaches of Messer Leonardo.
Hast thou heard aught of those?'

'What should I have heard?'

'That they be poisoned.'

'How poisoned?'

''Tis true. He hath poisoned them himself, by magic, for his
experiments. Monna Sidonia told me; wonderfully beautiful peaches!'

And again they were silent, embracing thus in the stillness and the
dark; their thoughts united, each listening to the quickened beat of the
other's heart--no further speech needed. At last Il Moro, with almost
paternal tenderness, kissed his young wife on the brow, and made the
sign of the cross.

'Sleep, dear one,' he said, 'sleep in peace.'

That night the duchess saw in her dreams fair peaches on a platter of
gold. She proved one and found it succulent and toothsome; but of a
sudden a voice cried unto her:--

'Poison! poison!' and again, 'Poison!'

The duke likewise dreamed his dream. And in it he fancied himself
walking on the shining lawn beside the fountain. And before him at a
little distance he saw three women, white-clad and embracing like fair
sisters. And nearing himself, he perceived the one to be Beatrice, and
the second Lucrezia, and the third Cecilia. He thanked his God that at
last they were friends; but in his heart he blamed them that they had
not been friends from the first.


X

The clock in the castle tower struck the hour of midnight, and
everywhere was the silence of sleep, saving only on the _altana_, where
the duchess was wont to gild her hair; for thither Morgantina, the
dwarf, had fled, having escaped from the closet in which she had been
confined: there, alone in the darkness, she bewailed the loss of her
baby.

'They have slain me my son! And wherefore, O Lord, wherefore? He had
done no wrong to any one; he alone comforted me!'

The night was serene; the air so pure, so transparent, that against the
horizon the icy summits of the Alps were visible, like everlasting
crystals. The stillness was long perturbed by the mournful cries of the
madwoman, like the keening of some bird of evil omen. Suddenly she gave
a sigh, raised her eyes to heaven, and was silent.

The stillness of death followed; and the fool smiled at the stars which,
far above in the measureless blue of a summer night, were shining upon
her--innocently and mysteriously shining.




BOOK IV

THE WITCHES' SABBATH--1494


     'Heaven above--heaven below,
      Stars above--stars below,
      All which is over man--under him shows;
      Glory to him who the riddle readeth!'
                                   TABULA SMARAGDINA.


I

In an obscure outskirt of Milan, near the Porta Vercellina, the Customs
House, and the canal called the Acqua Cantarana, stood an old house,
very solitary, and remarkable for the smoke which day and night ascended
in large spirals from an immense, winding, and blackened chimney. Here
dwelt Monna Sidonia, the wise woman. The upper floor she hired to Messer
Galeotto Sacrobosco, an alchemist; and in the lower she lived herself
with Cassandra, his niece, the young daughter of Luigi Sacrobosco, a
celebrated traveller, who had traversed Greece, the islands of the
Archipelago, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, in the quest for specimens of
ancient art. He possessed himself of all that came to hand: a Greek
marble, or a trifle of amber, a sham inscription from the tomb of Homer,
a new tragedy by Euripides, or a peroration by Demosthenes. Some thought
him a great man, but others dubbed him an impostor; and not a few
believed him crazy. His imagination was so enthralled by pagan
recollections that though to the last a good Catholic, he prayed to the
Olympian Hermes, and regarded Wednesday (_Mercoledi_) his day, as one
singularly propitious for mercantile ventures. No toil, no privations,
daunted him in his enterprises. On one occasion, having already put out
ten leagues to sea, he returned to copy an inscription of which
accident had informed him. Having lost his collection in a shipwreck,
his hair turned white with grief. If asked why he so plagued himself and
spent his days in such sore labour, he always replied:--

'I desire to raise the dead.'

In the little town of Mistra, near the ruins of Lacedæmon, he met a
maiden of extraordinary beauty, resembling the statues of Artemis. She
was the daughter of a poor and drunken village deacon; Luigi married her
and took her to Italy with a new copy of the Iliad, the fragments of a
Hecate, and the shreds of an earthenware amphora.

To the pair was born a daughter, whom they called Cassandra, Luigi being
at that time impassioned for Æschylean tragedy. The wife died, and the
father was off on his wanderings, so the child was left to the care of
Demetrius Chalcondylas, a learned Greek from Constantinople who had been
brought to Milan by the Sforzas. This old man of seventy, a
double-faced, cunning, and secretive person, pretended a vast zeal for
the Catholic Church; in his heart, however, like Cardinal Bessarione,
and most of the immigrant Greeks, he was a disciple of the last of the
masters of the ancient wisdom, Gemistus Pletho, the Replete with
Learning, the neoplatonist who had died forty years before at Mistra,
where Luigi had become enamoured of his Artemis. This man had been
affirmed by his disciples to be a re-incarnation of the illustrious
Plato himself; the theologians, on the contrary, maintained that he had
revived the anti-Christian heresies of Julian the Apostate, and that he
was to be fought not by argument and controversy, but by the Inquisition
and the stake. Chiefly they accused him on account of certain words
uttered to his disciples three years before his death. He had said: 'But
a few years after I shall have died, one sole Truth shall reign over all
peoples and nations, and men shall unite in the single faith' (_unam
eandemque religionem universum orbem esse suscepturam_). Being
questioned whether he meant the faith of Christ or of Mahomet, he
answered: 'Neither the one nor yet the other, but a faith which in
naught shall differ from the ancient paganism' (_neutram, inquit, sed a
gentilitate non differentem_).

Cassandra was bred by Chalcondylas in strict though feigned Christian
piety. Overhearing, however, much neoplatonic talk, and not
understanding its philosophical subtleties, the maid wove for herself a
fantastic dream of the coming Resurrection of the Gods. On her breast
she wore a talisman against fever, a present from her father; it was a
gem representing Dionysus as a naked youth, with thyrsus and
vine-branch, a rearing panther trying to lick the grapes in his hand.
Sometimes, when quite alone, she would hold her amethyst up to the sun
and gaze into its purple depths until her head swam, and she saw the god
in a vision, living, and ever young and adorable.

Messer Luigi ruined himself at last in his quest for treasures, and died
miserably of a putrid fever in a shepherd's hut beside the ruins of a
Phoenician temple, which he had himself discovered. Soon after,
Galeotto, his brother, who also had wandered for many years in pursuit,
not of antiquities but of the philosopher's stone, came to Milan,
established himself in the little house by the Vercellina gate, and took
his niece to live with him.

She still, however, frequented the house of Chalcondylas, and thither
came Giovanni Boltraffio to execute some copying for Messer Giorgio
Merula.

Encountering Cassandra again, Giovanni remembered the talk he had
overheard between her and Zoroastro about the poisoned tree, and he
shuddered. Many told him the maiden was a sorceress, but her charm was
not to be resisted, and almost every evening when his work was done he
sought her in the lonely cottage by the Vercellina gate. They sat on a
hillock together above the dark and silently swift waters of the canal,
not far from the sluice gates near the convent of St. Radegonda. A
scarce visible path, tangled with elder-bushes, wormwood, and nettles,
led to the little hillock; no one ever passed that way, and there the
two met and loitered and talked long together.


II

It was a sultry evening; at rare intervals a gust came flying, raising
the white dust and rustling in the leaves. It passed by, leaving the
stillness stiller than before. Nothing was heard but the dull, seemingly
subterranean growl of distant thunder, and against this low,
threatening, and solemn roar, the broken shrillness of a lute and the
drunken song of the customs-collector celebrating the Sunday feast in
the neighbouring tavern. At times a flash broke across the clouds, and
then for a moment the little house with the brick chimney, and the black
smoke of the alchemist's furnace, the long lean sacristan fishing from
the bank, the straight canal with the rows of larches and willows, the
flat-bottomed barges from the Lago Maggiore bringing white marble for
the cathedral, and drawn by sorry horses, their loose towing-ropes and
the long whips of the drivers dipping in the water--all stood out sharp
and clear against the prevailing blackness. All was again wrapped in
gloom, save for the alchemist's fire always vividly glowing. It was
reflected in the Cantarana, whence came noisome odours of stagnant
backwaters, rotting fern-leaves, tar, and decaying wood.

Giovanni and Cassandra were in their accustomed haunt.

''Tis tedious!' cried the girl, stretching herself wearily and snapping
her delicate white fingers behind her head; 'every day the same dull
round. To-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day. That same foolish
sacristan catching nothing; the same filthy smoke from Messer Galeotto's
workshop, where he, too, eternally seeks what he will never find; the
same boats towed by the same hateful horses; the same cracked lute! Ah,
if it would but change! If the French would come and rid us of Milan! if
the sacristan would catch a fish, or my uncle find some gold. _Dio Mio!_
what weariness!'

'I know!' cried Giovanni. 'I also at times find life so wearisome that I
am fain to die. But Fra Benedetto taught me a prayer very prevalent
against the demon of discontent. Shall I recite it for you?'

'Nay, Giovanni. It is long since I have been able to pray to your God.'

'My God? What god is there but my God? the only God?'

A quick flash, like the lightning of the storm, illumined her face;
never had it seemed to him so mystic, so unearthly, so fair. She was
silent for a time, passing her hand over the dark aureole of her hair.

'Hearken, friend. It was long ago--yonder--in my native land. I was
scarce more than a babe. My father had taken me with him on a journey.
We visited the ruins of an ancient temple. They stood high on a
promontory; the sea was around us and the screaming gulls; the waves
were breaking endlessly on black rocks, sharp as needles, and covered
with salt foam, which rose and fell, running off the sharp points of the
rocks in a seething stream. He found a half-faded inscription on the
fragment of a marble slab. I sat long alone on the temple steps,
listening to the sea and breathing in its freshness, mixed with the
scent of the sea-herbs. Then I went into the abandoned shrine. The
columns were yellow, but scarce crumbled by time, and between them the
azure sky seemed dark. There were poppies growing in the crevices
between the stones--pink poppies--the poppies of Greece! It was quite
still, but for that muffled roar of the waves which filled the temple as
if with the voices of prayer. And I fell on my knees and prayed to the
god who had once been enshrined there--unknown and now rejected by men.
I kissed his marble steps, and I wept and loved him because no one on
earth loved him any more, nor prayed to him--because he was dead. Never
since have I prayed so fervently! And that temple--it was the temple of
DIONYSUS!'

'By the love of God, Cassandra, what are you saying? This Dionysus, whom
you call God, exists not, nor did exist.'

'Did he not?' cried the girl, scornfully; 'then why teach the holy
fathers, whom you reverence, that the gods, banished in the days of the
conquering Jesus, were changed into most potent demons? How could
Giorgio da Novara, the great astronomer, learn by exact observation that
the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn produced the teaching of Moses;
with Mars, that of the Chaldeans; with Venus, that of Mahomet; with
Mercury, that of Christ; and that conjunction with the moon--future for
him--would bring the teaching of Antichrist and the Resurrection of the
Gods?'

The storm was drawing nearer, the thunder roared louder, the flashes
grew ever brighter, heavy clouds were spreading overhead, yet still the
broken lute sobbed forth its insistent melody on the threatening air.

'O madonna!' cried Boltraffio clasping his hands, 'do you not see that
'tis the devil who is tempting you that he may lure you to the abyss!
Eternal curses upon him!'

The girl turned, laid both hands on his shoulders, and said:--

'And does he not tempt you also? Why did you leave your sainted
teacher, Benedetto? Why did you enter into the school of the impious
Leonardo? What brings you hither unto me? Do you not know I am a witch?
Are you not affrighted lest you lose your soul talking here with me?'

'The strength of the Lord defend us!' he stammered, shuddering.

She silently drew near him, fixing him with her wondrous eyes. At that
moment the lightning rent the cloud and flashed on her pale face. Was
she the goddess who had risen before Giovanni's awestruck gaze from her
tomb on the Hill of the Mill?

''Tis she!' he thought in terror. 'She has found me again, the White
She-devil!'

He would have risen, but his forces seemed to have left him. He felt the
girl's hot breath on his cheek, and listened as she whispered:--

'Will you that I reveal everything to you? Will you fly with me thither
where He is? Ah, it is good there! _There_ is no weariness; nothing
maketh ashamed. There all things are permitted as in Paradise!'

A cold sweat broke out on Giovanni's brow, but curiosity impelled him,
and in a low voice he asked:--

'Where?'

'_Al Sabbato!_' she answered with passionate languor, her lips almost
touching his cheek.

A peal of thunder, now quite overhead, shook earth and sky, rolling
through the air in majestic reverberation, like the laugh of unseen
giants. Then slowly it died away into the great silence.

And then rang out the melancholy peaceful sound of the convent bell, the
evening Angelus. Giovanni made the sign of the cross.

'It is late,' said the girl rising; 'I must return homeward. Do you see
those torches, there on the road? 'Tis the duke coming to visit Messer
Galeotto, who is to show him an interesting experiment with lead. He
thinks it can be turned into gold.'

True it was, the tramping of hoofs was heard coming from the Porta
Vercellina. Cassandra lingered for a moment, then darted through the
tangled elder-bushes and disappeared.


III

Messer Galeotto had consumed his whole life in the search for the
philosopher's stone. Having finished his medical course at Bologna
University, he had entered as _famulus_ the service of Count Bernardo
Trevisani, renowned as an adept in the occult sciences. Afterwards, for
fifteen years, he had sought the transforming mercury in all possible
substances; in volatile salts, bismuth, arsenic, human blood, gall, and
hair, in animals and plants. In this fashion the six thousand ducats of
his patrimony had been dissipated in the smoke which ascended from his
chimney. He must needs live on the wealth of others. Money-lenders cast
him into prison; he escaped; and for eight years experimented with eggs,
destroying some twenty thousand. Next he studied copperas with Maestro
Enrico, the papal pronotary, fell ill from the poisonous fumes, lay in
bed for fourteen months, and, deserted by every one, came near dying.
Having endured all humiliations and persecutions, starvation, beggary,
contempt, and even judicial torture, he wandered as an itinerant
artificer through France, Spain, the countries of the Empire, Holland,
Greece, Persia, Palestine, Northern Africa. At last, old and worn out,
but not yet disillusioned, he returned to Lombardy, where Il Moro
promised him the office of court alchemist.

At Milan, in the lonely cottage by the Porta Vercellina, he had set up
his laboratory. It was a large chamber, in the middle of which was a
clumsy stove of fire-proof earth divided into compartments, and fitted
with valves, crucibles and bellows. In one corner of the room was a pile
of refuse. The working-table was heaped with every sort of complicated
apparatus, cubes, rectifiers, receivers, retorts, funnels, mortars,
test-tubes, bottles, baths. A pungent smell was given off by poisonous
alkalis and acids. Here the seven gods of Olympus, the seven heavenly
planets, a whole occult and mystic universe had its counterpart in
metal: the sun in gold, the moon in silver, Venus in brass, Mars, iron,
Saturn, lead, Jupiter, tin, and Mercury in quicksilver. Here were
substances with barbaric names which struck terror into the profane.
Here were wolf's milk, the iron of Achilles, anacardines, asterites
(clear-shining stones, having in the midst an image of a full moon),
androgyna, and rhaponticum, aristolochia or hart-wort (for giving ease
in childbirth); and a priceless drop of the blood of a lion which had
cost years to obtain, a gem, red as a ruby, which cures all diseases and
blesses with eternal youth.

At his table sat the alchemist, meagre, small, wrinkled as an old
mushroom, but still alert and tireless. His head supported on his two
hands, Messer Galeotto was gazing intently at a retort, in which with
low noise and bubbling was burning oil of Venus, a clear green fluid.
The candle that burned by the philosopher's side sent an emerald light
through the retort on an ancient parchment folio, a work by the Arab
chemist Djabira Abdallah.

Hearing voices and footsteps on the stair, Galeotto rose, threw a glance
round the laboratory to make sure all was ready, signed to his silent
_famulus_ to throw fuel on the furnace, and sallied forth to meet his
guests.


IV

They were a merry company of knights and dames, just risen from supper
and Malvoisie. Leonardo was there, and Marliani, the court physician, a
man profoundly versed in alchemy. The ladies entered, and the quiet cell
of the student was filled with perfumes, with the rustle of silk, with
light chatter and laughter like the hum of birds. One damsel overturned
a retort with her hanging sleeve, another meddling with a piece of iron
slag cut her dainty glove, another spilt the mercury on the table and
screamed with delight on seeing the living silver drops.

'And shall we really see Messer Satan in the fire at the moment of the
lead's conversion?' asked Madonna Filiberta of her Spanish lover; 'is it
not a sin to assist at such experiments?'

The alchemist whispered in Leonardo's ear:--

'Believe me, Messere, I hold myself much honoured by your visit.' And he
warmly clasped his hand, adding before Leonardo could respond:--

'Oh, I know, I know! 'Tis a secret from the crowd; but we understand
each other, do we not?'

Then with a smile of great affability he said aloud:--

'With licence from my most illustrious protector, the renowned duke, and
of all these loveliest ladies, I will adventure, now to exhibit the
divine metamorphosis. Will you all condescend to lend me your honourable
attention?'

First he showed his crucible, a melting-pot with thick sides of
fire-proof clay; he begged each one to examine it, and tap it, and
convince himself there was no concealed deception, while he animadverted
on the frauds of pretended philosophers who were wont to have vessels
with false bottoms in which gold had been placed, not made. He also
craved inspection of the pewter, the fuel, the bellows, and all else, to
prove his good faith. Then the lead was chopped into small pieces and
consigned to the crucible, which was then put on the hottest place of
the furnace. The silent, cross-eyed _famulus_--so pale, corpse-like and
surly, that one of the ladies near fainted, believing him the expected
Messer Satan--began to work a huge pair of bellows, and the fire quickly
leaped into flame. Galeotto meanwhile entertained his visitors with
conversation, and awakened general mirth by calling his science of
alchemy _casta meretrix_, who had many lovers but deluded them all,
offered easy conquest to everybody, but had so far yielded to the
embraces of none.

Luigi Marliani, the court physician, a fat, taciturn, gloomy man with a
dignified and intelligent face, lost patience with this chatter, and
wiping his brow, cried out:--

'Messer Galeotto, methinks 'tis time for business. Your metal is already
bubbling.'

Galeotto opened a little blue paper packet which contained a bright
yellow powder, viscous and sparkling, like highly polished glass. It had
a strong smell of burnt sea-salt. This was the momentous tincture, the
long-sought, priceless jewel of alchemy, the wonder-working _lapis
philosophorum_.

With the point of a knife he detached a speck of the powder no larger
than a turnip-seed, wrapped it in a ball of bees-wax, and tossed it into
the boiling pewter.

'And what do you consider the strength of that solution?' asked
Marliani.

'One to two thousand eight hundred and twenty of the metal to be
converted,' replied Galeotto. 'Naturally my solution is not yet
perfected, but shortly, I hope, the figures will be one to a million.
Then it will suffice to take of it the weight of a grain of millet, to
dissolve it in a barrel of water containing the parings of a hazelnut;
and finally, to sprinkle your vines therewith; in result you will have
your vintage in May. _Mare tingerem si Mercurius esset._ I would turn
the sea into gold had I competency in quicksilver.'

Marliani turned away with a shrug. This bombast infuriated him, and he
hinted the impossibility of such transformations by arguments supported
by Aristotle.

'Have patience, _domine magister_,' said Galeotto with a smile; 'in a
little space I will propound to you such a syllogism as not all your
logic can confute.'

Therewith he threw a handful of white powder in the fire. Clouds of
thick smoke filled the laboratory. Hissing and crackling, up leapt a
many-coloured flame, changing like a rainbow from blue to green, from
red to yellow. The spectators were alarmed, and Filiberta afterward
swore that at the instant the flame was purple, she saw in it the face
of the Devil. The alchemist with a long hooked iron raised the lid of
the crucible. The metal, white-hot, bubbled and hissed and gurgled. Then
the lid was replaced; the bellows soughed and whistled, and when ten
minutes later a thin iron rod was dipped into the molten liquid, all saw
hanging on its end a yellow drop.

'Ready!' cried the alchemist.

The pot was now removed from the furnace and allowed to cool. Then
before the astounded spectators, there fell from it, sparkling and
resounding on the earthen floor, a bar of gold. The alchemist pointed
dramatically, and exclaimed:--

'_Solve mihi hunc syllogismum!_'

'Unheard of! Incredible! Against all the laws of nature and of logic!'
murmured Marliani in stupefaction.

The face of Galeotto was white, his eyes glowed with the fire of
inspiration, and looking up to heaven, he cried:--

'_Laudetur Deus in æternum!_ Praise God in eternity who deigns to give
part of his infinite power unto us, the most abject of his creatures.'

The gold was tested with sulphuric acid. It proved to be purer than the
finest of Hungary or Arabia. The company pressed about the venerable
philosopher, congratulating him, and wringing his hands. Il Moro took
him aside.

'You serve me in fidelity and truth, Messer Galeotto?'

'I would I had more lives than one, that I might dedicate them all to
your Excellency,' replied the alchemist.

'Then, Galeotto, beware lest any of the other princes----'

'_Illustrissimo_, if there be one of them who shall get even a scent of
it, have me hanged for a hound.' And after a pause he added, bowing very
low, 'I would pray of your Excellency----'

'What? Again?'

'God is my witness, 'tis for the last time.'

'How much?'

'Five thousand ducats.'

The duke reflected, reduced the sum by a thousand, and promised. It was
now late; Madonna Beatrice might be anxious; the company hastened to
take their leave, each one receiving from the alchemist a fragment of
the new-made gold. Only Leonardo remained behind.


V

When they were alone Galeotto said to him, 'Well, Master, what think you
of my experiment?'

'The gold was in the rods,' replied Leonardo dryly.

'What rods? What do you mean, Sir?'

'The rods with which you stirred the molten metal. I saw all.'

'Did you not yourself examine all my utensils?'

'These rods were not those we examined.'

'Not those! Master, permit me----'

'Have I not told you I saw everything?' repeated Leonardo with a smile.
'Be not obstinate, Galeotto. The gold was concealed in hollow rods
tipped with wood. When the wooden ends were consumed in the molten mass,
the gold fell into it.'

The old man's legs shook; over his face spread a look at once abject and
pathetic. Leonardo touched him on the shoulder.

'Fear not, Messer Galeotto, none shall know. I am no tale-bearer.'

The impostor seized his hand feverishly and cried:--

'You will not betray me?'

'No. I wish you no ill. But, Messer Galeotto, why these frauds?'

'Oh, Messer Leonardo,' cried the other, and immediately the boundless
despair in his eyes was transfigured by a flash of hope, 'I swear to you
by God, that if I seem to have practised deception, 'tis but for the
welfare of the duchy, for the triumph of science, and because my
deception shall endure but a brief space. For, Messer Leonardo, truth it
is that I have verily found the philosopher's stone. I do not assert
that I have it yet in my possession, but I know that it already exists.
That is to say, it as good as exists; for I have found the way, and you
know that the way is everything. Three or four more experiments, and lo!
it is accomplished. What was I to do, Messere? Is not the discovery of
so grand a truth justification for so small a deception?'

'Nay, Messer Galeotto,' replied Leonardo gravely, 'to what purpose would
you play with me at blind-man's-buff? You know right well, even as I
know, that the transmutation of metals is a baseless dream: that there
is no philosopher's stone, nor can be one. Alchemy, necromancy, black
magic, all these sciences not founded on mathematics and exact
experiment are delusion or deception--flags of charlatans, swelled but
by the bellying of the wind, after which runs the gaping herd,
applauding it knows not what.'

His eyes round and bright with astonishment, the alchemist hung on the
lips of the master, and when Leonardo stopped he did not reply.
Presently, however, he nodded his head intelligently and winked.

'Ah! ah! Messer Leonardo, but this will not serve. Am I not of the
initiated? And do we not all know that thou thyself art the prince of
alchemists, the possessor of the most recondite mysteries of nature, the
new Hermes Trismegistus, the new Prometheus.'

'I?'

'Thou thyself, Master.'

'Call you this jesting, Messer Galeotto?'

'Contrariwise. 'Tis you, Messer Leonardo, who would jest. How astute and
impenetrable you are! In my time I have seen many who were jealous of
their secrets of science, never an one like you.'

Leonardo looked at him searchingly; he strove in vain to be angry. He
smiled involuntarily.

'Do you seriously believe in these arts?' he asked.

'Do I believe in them? Messere, if God Himself came to me hither at this
moment and said to me: "Galeotto, there is no philosopher's stone," I
should answer him: "Lord, even as it is true that thou hast created me,
so is it true that there is that stone, and that I shall find it."'

After this Leonardo disputed no more, but listened with interest to the
speculations of the alchemist. Presently the talk swerved to the
possible assistance of the Devil in the occult sciences; the old man,
however, would none of this. He declared the Devil to be the weakest,
the most miserable, the most impotent of all the creations of God; he
himself had faith only in the human mind, and believed that to science
all things were possible.

Then suddenly, without any consciousness of an abrupt transition, and as
if playing with some agreeable and diverting recollection, he asked
whether Messer Leonardo had frequent apparitions of elemental spirits.
And when his interlocutor confessed to never having seen any, Galeotto
again refused to believe him; and with relish told how the salamander
has a body a finger and a half in length, spotted, thin, and harsh,
while the sylphide is blue as the sky, transparent, and ethereal. He
spoke also of the nymphs and undines that live in the rivers and the
sea; of the gnomes, pygmies, and underground dwarfs; of the durgans and
dryads, dwellers in trees, and the rare spirits that inhabit precious
stones.

'I cannot convey to you,' concluded Galeotto, 'how beneficent and
exquisite are these genii!'

'Why, then,' asked Leonardo, 'do they appear only to the elect?'

'Would you have them appear to all? They dread vulgar persons,
libertines, materialists, drunkards, and gluttons. They affect the
innocent, the childlike, simple ones. They live only where there is no
malice nor cunning. Timid and fearful as gazelles they take refuge from
human eyes in their native elements.'

And a smile of infinite tenderness illuminated the old man's face, as if
at the memory of long-ago dreams.

'What a charming old fool!' thought Leonardo, no longer scornful, but
ready to simulate participation in any scientific absurdity to please
this man, whom now he treated with affectionate consideration, like a
child.

They parted as friends; and the moment he was alone the alchemist
plunged into new experiments with the oil of Venus.


VI

All this time Monna Sidonia, the mistress of the house, and Cassandra
sat before an immense open fireplace in the room below Messer Galeotto's
laboratory. Their supper of coarse vegetables was stewing on the hearth,
and the old woman with unvarying motion of her wrinkled finger spun the
linen thread with her distaff. Cassandra watched her idly, and
thought:--

'Always the same thing. To-day as yesterday, to-morrow as to-day. The
cricket chirps, the mouse squeaks, the spindle hums. There is a
crackling in the dry sticks on the hearth, and I smell turnips and
garlic.'

Presently the old woman began prating in her usual way; saying that she
was not rich, whatever the people might say about her money-pot buried
in the vineyard. That was all an idle tale. The truth was, she was
ruining herself for Galeotto and his niece. She had too much heart, that
was it, or she would never keep them, the two of them hanging on to her
neck like a pair of millstones. And of a truth Cassandra was no longer a
child, and ought to be thinking of the future; her uncle would die some
day or other, and leave her as poor as Job. She might at least get a
husband. She might at least accept the hand of the rich horsedealer at
Abbiategrasso, who had the folly to run after her. He was not young, but
he was a staid, God-fearing man without any bees in his bonnet; had a
good business and a mill, and an olive-press. What more did she want?

Cassandra listened in silence; but tedium sat on her like a nightmare;
seized her by the throat and suffocated her. She felt an irresistible
longing to break out into rebellious weeping and rage.

Monna Sidonia fished in the pot for a succulent turnip, mashed it up
with grape-juice, and munched with apparent appetite; but the young
girl, submissive though with growing desperation, stretched herself and
interlaced her fingers behind her hair. After supper the old woman, like
a wearied Fate, nodded over her distaff, and her talk died down into
disconnected mumbling. Then Cassandra drew forth her talisman, and the
firelight shining through its purple depths, she studied the figure of
the naked god, and her heart filled with love for the beautiful Hellenic
deities.

She sighed heavily, concealed her amulet, and said diffidently:--

'Monna Sidonia! to-night at Barco di Ferrara and at Benevento there is
the gathering. Aunt! good kind aunt! we will not dance. We will go only
to see. We will come back at once. I will do whatever you wish; I will
even try to get a present out of the horsedealer--only be kind for once.
Let us fly! let us fly together--now--at once!'

And the girl's eyes sparkled hungrily. The beldame surveyed her
curiously; then her blue and withered lips parted in a smile which
displayed her one tusk-like yellow tooth, and her face lit up with a
hideous joy.

'Ah, you wish it? Very much, do you? You have caught the taste? Was
there ever such a girl? For my part, I am ready to fly every night. But
see you here, Cassandra, you take the sin on your own soul. To-night I
wasn't even thinking of it. I'll do it only for your sake, out of my too
great goodness of heart.'

Without haste the old woman went about the room, shut the shutters,
stuffed rags into the chinks, locked all doors, poured water on the
fire, lighted a black candle endued with magical properties, and from an
iron locker took an earthen vessel containing a pungent ointment. She
made show of being deliberate and sensible, but her hands shook as
though she were drunk, her sunken eyes were at times turbid, at times
they sparkled like coals. Cassandra had dragged the two great troughs
used for the kneading of dough into the centre of the room.

Now Monna Sidonia stripped herself, and sitting astride of a broomstick
on one of the troughs, she smeared herself with the ointment which she
had taken from the locker. A hideous odour filled the room; the
medicament, infallible for making witches fly, was composed of poisonous
lettuce, hemlock, nightshade, mandragora, poppy, henbane, serpent's
blood, and the fat of unchristened children.

Cassandra could not look at the hag's deformity. At the eleventh hour
she recoiled.

'What are you about?' grumbled the crone; 'are you going to leave me to
fly alone? Come--make haste. Take your clothes off.'

'All right. But, Monna Sidonia, put the light out. I can't do it in the
light.'

'Bah! what modesty! Never mind, there'll be no modesty on the mountain.'

She blew out the candle, making the sign of the cross with the left hand
for the pleasing of the devil, her master.

Then the girl rapidly undressed, knelt in the trough, and smeared
herself.

In the darkness the old woman was heard mumbling the senseless
disconnect

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