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.'