DEATH--THE WINGED PRECURSOR--1516-1519
[Greek: Phereis pterugas hôs isôtheis angelois.]
Inscription on the figure of St. John the Baptist.
(Thou hast wings, like unto the angels.)
Spunteranno le ali.--LEONARDO DA VINCI.
(There shall be wings.)
I
In the heart of France, overhanging the Loire, stood the royal castle of
Amboise. It was built of stone, mellow in colour as the bloom on a
golden plum, which in the pale blues and greens of the fading sunset
gleamed soft as a floating cloud. From the square tower the view
extended over a forest of primeval oak, beyond the broad meadows
flanking the river. In the early summer they were brilliant with poppies
invading the azure lines of the flax. Damp mists hung over the valley,
dark poplars and silvery willows stood in long rows. It resembled the
plain of Lombardy: only the rivers were unlike each other:--the Adda, a
torrent, passionate, storm-tossed, young; the Loire, quiet and slow,
gliding gently over shallows, wearied and very old.
At the foot of the castle clustered the peaked roofs of the town,
slated, black, smooth and shining in the sun, and among them massive
brick chimneys. The streets, narrow, winding, and sunless, belonged to
the Middle Ages. Everywhere, under all cornices and along all
water-pipes, at the angles of the windows, door-frames, lintels, were
small stone figures--jolly friars with flagons, rosaries and wooden
sandals, grave doctors of theology, thrifty citizens with fat purses
hugged to their breasts. The same types were to be seen to-day walking
the city streets; all here was _bourgeois_, prosperous, conventional,
pious, and cold.
When the king came to Amboise for the hunting, the little town changed
its aspect. The streets grew noisy with the baying of dogs, the champing
of horses, the blare of trumpets. Music resounded nightly from the
palace, and its walls shone red with the flaring of torches. The king
gone, silence descended again upon the streets, the palace was like an
abode of the dead; no human step nor voice, save at mass-time on
Sundays, and in the spring evenings when the children sang the old song
of St. Denis under apple-trees which showered rosy petals on their
heads. Night fell, the song was hushed, the children went away, and
again there was silence; such silence as made audible the measured beat
of the clock over the gate of the Horloge Tower, and the cry of the wild
swans far away on the sand-banks of the Loire.
Half a league from the castle, on the road to the Mill of St. Thomas,
was a small château called Cloux, once the residence of the royal
armourer. It was surrounded partly by a high wall, partly by a stream;
in front of the house was a meadow, and a tangle of willows, alders, and
hazel bushes descending to the river. The pink walls of the château were
sharply defined against a background of chestnuts and elms; the windows
and doors ornamented by a dog-tooth moulding in yellow Touraine stone.
It was a small building with a high-pitched slatted roof; a tiny chapel
on the right of the main entrance, and an octagonal tower, in which was
a winding-stair, made it resemble a villa. Rebuilt forty years earlier,
the outside was still new, cheerful, and inviting.
This little château Francis I. assigned as lodging to Leonardo da Vinci.
II
The king received the artist with cordiality, and talked long with him
of his works, past and future, respectfully saluting him as 'father' and
'teacher.'
Leonardo proposed to remodel the castle of Amboise, also to construct an
immense canal, which, converting the barren marshes into a luxuriant
garden, should connect the Loire and the Saône at Macon, and thus open a
new route from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean. In this wise he
thought to benefit a foreign country by those gifts of knowledge which
his fatherland had contemned. The king was pleased by the project, and
at once Leonardo set out to explore the locality, studying the soil of
the Sologne near Romorantin, the tributaries of the Loire and the Cher,
the level of the waters, the topography of the whole district.
One day he visited Loches, a small town to the south of Amboise, where
was the castle in which Ludovico Il Moro, Duke of Lombardy, had been
incarcerated for eight years. The old warden told Leonardo how Il Moro
had once made his escape, by hiding in a cart loaded with straw; not
knowing the roads, however, he had lost his way in the forest, and next
day had been easily recaptured. His last years had been spent in pious
meditation, in prayer, and in the study of Dante's _Commedia_, the only
book he had been allowed to bring out of Italy. At fifty he was a feeble
wrinkled old man; only at rare intervals did his eyes flash, when
rumours reached him of grave political changes. He died in May 1508
after a short illness.
The warden told further how Ludovico had, a few months before his death,
devised a pastime for himself; had begged for brushes and paints and had
decorated the walls and arches of his prison. Leonardo found traces of
his work on the damp and mouldy plaster; involved patterns, stripes and
bars; stars and crosses; red on a white, yellow on a blue ground; in the
middle, the helmeted head of a warrior, probably himself, thus inscribed
in broken French, '_Je porte en prison pour ma devise que je m'arme de
pacience par force de peines que l'on me fait porter._'
Another sentence ran all round the ceiling; it began with huge letters:
'_Celui qui_,' then, space failing, continued in characters small and
cramped, '_net pas contan_.' Reading these piteous inscriptions and
looking at the clumsy drawings, Leonardo remembered how Il Moro had
smiled admiringly on the swans in the moat of the fortress at Milan.
'Perhaps,' thought he, 'the love of beauty which is certainly in his
soul will justify him before the tribunal of the Most High.'
Meditating on the fall of the hapless duke, he remembered also what he
had been told of the fate of another of his patrons, Cæsar Borgia.
Julius II. had treacherously handed Cæsar over to his enemies, who had
carried him to Spain and confined him in the tower of Medina del Campo.
Daring and ingenious, he escaped by means of a rope let down from his
prison window. The jailers had time to sever the rope; he fell and was
seriously hurt, but none the less crawled to the horse provided by an
accomplice, and rode away. He went to Pampeluna to the court of his
brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, where he took service as a
condottiere.
Consternation spread through Italy; the pope trembled; and ten thousand
ducats were set upon the head of the fugitive. On a wintry night of 1507
in an encounter with the French mercenaries under Beaumont, Cæsar was
deserted by his followers, and driven into the dry bed of a river,
where, like an animal at bay, he defended himself with desperate
courage. At last he fell, pierced by twenty wounds. The mercenaries tore
the splendid trappings from the dead warrior, and left him naked where
he had fallen. Later, when the Navarrese came to seek him they knew him
not; only Juanito, his little page, recognised his lord by reason of his
great love for him; and flinging himself on the corpse he embraced it
sobbing. Beautiful was the dead face, upturned to the heavens; and it
seemed he had died even as he had lived, fearless, and without knowledge
of remorse. Madonna Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, wept ever for her
brother; and when she died they found a hair shirt chafing her tender
body. And Cæsar's youthful widow, Charlotte d'Albret, who in the few
days she had been with him had come to love him as a very Griselda,
having learned of his death, retired to perpetual seclusion in the
castle of La Motte Feuillée, buried in the heart of a forest, where only
winds rustled the dry leaves; nor used to leave her chamber, hung with
perpetual mourning, save to distribute alms, imploring pensioners to
pray for the soul of Cæsar.
And likewise the duke's subjects in Romagna, husbandmen and half-savage
shepherds from the valleys of the Apennine, kept most grateful memory of
him. Long they refused to believe him dead, but waited for him as a god
who should some day return and establish justice in the land, cast down
the tyrants, and defend the poor. Beggars who wandered from village to
village chanted 'the woeful lament for the Duca Valentino,' in which was
the line--
'Fe' cose estreme, ma senza misura.'
Thus Leonardo mused on these two men, Ludovico and Cesare, whose lives
had been signalled by great events, yet had passed away like shadows,
leaving no trace. And he felt, after all, that his own life, spent in
lofty contemplation, had been at least as fruitful.
Thus thinking, he ceased to murmur at the untowardness of Fate.
III
Like the majority of Leonardo's projects, the making of the Sologne
canal ended in nothing. Timorous counsellors persuaded Francis of the
impracticability of the enterprise. His Majesty grew cold, was
disenchanted, and soon forgot all about it; Leonardo found that the King
of France was no more to be relied upon than Il Moro, Soderini, or Leo
X. He resolved to abandon all hope of enriching mankind by the treasures
of his knowledge, and to retire for the rest of his life into solitude.
In the spring of 1517 he returned to Cloux, sick of fever contracted in
the marshes of the Sologne. He recovered partially, and by the summer
season had strength sufficient to leave his room, and leaning on
Francesco's arm to walk daily as far as to the woods. Here he would sit
in the shadow of the trees, his pupil at his feet. Sometimes Francesco
read to him; sometimes he was content merely to enjoy the sights and
sounds of peaceful nature, gazing at the sky, the leaves, the stones,
the grasses, the golden moss on the huge tree-trunks, as if bidding them
all a last farewell. A sorrowful presentiment, a great pity for the
Master oppressed Francesco's heart. Silently he would touch Leonardo's
hand with his lips; and then feel that trembling hand laid upon his head
in a mournful caress, which deepened his sense of a coming doom.
At this time the Master began a strange picture.
Sheltered by overhanging rocks, in a cool shadow among flowering
grasses, sat a god; he was long-haired and fair as a woman, but languid
and pale; his head crowned with vine-leaves, a spotted skin round his
loins, a thyrsus in his hand. He sat with legs crossed and seemed to be
listening, a hinting smile on his lips, his finger pointed in the
direction whence came the sound, perhaps the song of Mænads, perhaps
the voice of great Pan, that thrilling sound from which all living
things must flee.
In Boltraffio's casket Leonardo had found an amethyst gem, doubtless a
gift from Monna Cassandra, with an engraving of Dionysus. There were
also stray leaves from Euripides' tragedy, the _Bacchæ_, translated from
the Greek and copied out by Giovanni. Many times had Leonardo read these
fragments; amongst them the address of Pentheus to the unknown god.
'Ha! of thy form thou art not ill-favoured, stranger,
For woman's tempting!
No wrestler thou, as show thy flowing locks
Down thy cheek floating, fraught with all desire;
And white from heedful tendance is thy skin,
Smit by no sunshafts, but made wan by shade,
While thou dost hunt desire with beauty's lure.'
And the chorus of Bacchantes, answering the impious king, extol Dionysus
as 'the most terrible, the most beneficent of gods, who giveth to
mortals the drunkenness of ecstasy.'
On the same page, side by side with the verses from Euripides, Giovanni
had copied verses from the Bible.
Leaving his Bacchus unfinished, Leonardo began another picture, still
more strange, of St. John the Baptist. He worked at it more continuously
and more rapidly than was his wont, as if feeling that his days were
numbered, that his strength was every day declining, and that now or
never he must give expression to that mystery which all his life he had
hidden from men,--even from himself.
Soon the picture was sufficiently advanced for the conception to be
clear. The background was dark, recalling the gloom of that cavern he
had once described to Monna Lisa as the occasion both of curiosity and
of fear. Yet the dimness was not impenetrable, but blent with light,
melting into it as smoke dissolves into sunlight, as distant music
vibrates away into silence. And between the darkness and the perfect
light appeared what at first seemed a phantom, but presently snowed more
distinct than life itself; the face and figure of a naked youth,
womanish, seductively beautiful, recalling the words of Pentheus.
But instead of the leopard's skin he wore a garment of camel's hair;
instead of the thrysus he carried a cross. Smiling, with bent head, as
if listening, all expectation, all curiosity, yet half afraid, he
pointed with one hand to the cross, with the other to himself, and on
his lips the words seemed to tremble:--
'There cometh one after me whose shoe's-latchet I am not worthy to
unloose.'
IV
After a tedious morning spent in touching for the king's evil, Francis
I. felt a desire for something beautiful to divert his mind from the
spectacle of deformity and sickness. He resolved to visit Leonardo's
studio. Accordingly, with a few attendants, he presented himself at
Cloux.
All day the painter had worked at his Baptist. His room was large and
cold, with a brick floor and a high-raftered ceiling. The last slanting
rays of the sun streamed in through the narrow window; and Leonardo was
hastening to finish his day's task before the coming on of twilight.
When he heard voices and footsteps under the window, he said to Melzi:--
'I admit no one. Say I am ill.'
Francesco went out obediently to stop the intruders; but seeing the king
he bowed respectfully and threw open the doors. Leonardo had barely time
to cover the portrait of La Gioconda; this he always did if he expected
strangers.
Francis entered; he was richly but gaudily dressed, with excess of
jewellery and gold trimmings. He was twenty-four years of age, well
built, tall and strong, majestic, and of agreeable manners. Yet there
was something displeasing in his face, something at once sensual and
sly, suggestive of a satyr.
He refused to allow Leonardo to kneel, bowed respectfully himself, and
even embraced the aged painter.
'It is long since we saw each other, Maître Léonard,' he said. 'How is
your health? Do you paint much? Have you done many new pictures? What is
that one?' and he pointed to the curtained Monna Lisa.
'An old portrait, sire, which your Majesty has already seen.'
'Let me see it again. The oftener one sees your pictures the more one
admires them.'
The painter hesitated, but to his annoyance a courtier removed the veil,
and La Gioconda was revealed.
The king, throwing himself on a chair, gazed long without a word.
'Marvellous!' he exclaimed at last. 'That is the fairest woman I ever
saw! Who is she?'
'Madonna Lisa, wife of a Florentine citizen.'
'Did you paint it lately?'
'Ten years ago.'
'Is she still beautiful?'
'Sire, she is dead.'
'Maître Léonard da Vinci,' said Saint Gelais, the court poet, 'worked
five years at yon portrait, and has left it unfinished--so at least he
avers.'
'Unfinished?' cried the king. 'I pray you, what does it lack? She seems
alive--on the point to speak. You are enviable, Maître Léonard! Five
years with that woman! Had she not died, I trow, you would not have
finished it yet.' He laughed, and the resemblance to a satyr increased.
It never occurred to him that Monna Lisa might have been a faithful
wife.
'I see, sir, you have a pretty taste in women,' resumed His Majesty
gaily. 'What shoulders! what a bosom! And one may guess at further
beauties!'
Leonardo remained silent; he grew pale, and his eyes were fixed on the
ground.
'To paint such a likeness,' continued the king, ''tis not enough to be
an artist; you must fathom all the secrets of a woman's heart, that
labyrinth, that tangle, impossible to the devil himself. Yon lady seems
modest; she folds her hands like a nun; but wait a bit; guess what is in
her heart.
'Souvent femme varie
Bien fol qui s'y fie!'
Leonard stepped aside, as if to move another picture to the light, and
Saint Gelais whispered scandal to his master concerning Leonardo's
supposed tastes in matters of the heart.
Francis seemed surprised, but shrugged his shoulders indulgently, and
turned to an unfinished cartoon on an easel near the portrait.
'What is this?'
'Bacchus, methinks,' said the poet, pointing to the thyrsus.
'And this?'
'It would seem, Bacchus again,' said Saint Gelais.
'The hair and the breast are like a girl,' said the king; 'it has the
same smile as La Gioconda.'
'A hermaphrodite then,' returned the poet; and repeated Plato's fable of
the original men-women, and the origin of the passion of Love. 'Maître
Léonard would fain restore the primitive type,' he concluded mockingly.
Francis turned to the painter.
'Resolve our doubts, Master,' he said; 'is it Bacchus or a
hermaphrodite?'
'Sire,' said Leonardo, reddening, 'it is St. John the Baptist.'
The king shook his head in bewilderment. This mixture of the sacred and
the profane seemed blasphemous to him, yet rather attractive. Not that
the blasphemy mattered; every one knows that painters have queer
fancies!
'I will buy both pictures,' he said; 'the Bacchus--I mean the Baptist,
and Lisa la Gioconda. What is the price?'
'Your Majesty,' began the painter, embarrassed, 'they are not yet
finished.'
'Tut, man! St. John you can finish at once, and as for Lisa, I will not
have her touched. I want her with me at once, hear you? Tell me the
price, and fear not. I will not try to cheapen her.'
What was Leonardo to say to this frivolous coarse man? How explain what
the portrait was to its painter, and why no price could induce him to
give it up?
'You will not speak? Then I will name a price myself. Three thousand
crowns? How say you? 'Tis not enough? Three and a half?'
'Sire,' implored the artist, his voice shaking; 'I can assure you----'
'Well! well! Maître Léonard, four thousand?'
A murmur of astonishment came from the courtiers. Not Lorenzo de' Medici
himself had ever set such a price upon a picture. Leonardo raised his
eyes in unutterable confusion. He was ready to fall on his knees, to beg
as men beg for their lives, that he might not be robbed of La Gioconda.
Francis took his embarrassment for gratitude, rose to leave, and as a
farewell, again embraced the painter.
'Then that's settled. Four thousand crowns, and the money is ready for
you when you choose. To-morrow I shall send for her. Make yourself easy.
I will hang her with such honour as shall content you. I know her value!
I will preserve her for posterity!'
When the king had gone, Leonardo sank into a chair, looking at his
picture, scarce believing what had happened. Absurd, childish devices
suggested themselves to him: he would hide the portrait; he would refuse
to give it up, though threatened with capital punishment. He would send
Melzi to Italy with it--nay, he would flee himself.
Night fell. Francesco looked several times into the room, but did not
venture to speak. Leonardo still sat before Monna Lisa, his face pale
and rigid as that of a corpse. At midnight he went into Francesco's
room.
'Get up. We must go to the castle. I have to see the king.'
'Master, it is late. You are weary. You have not the strength. Let us
wait for the morrow.'
'No, it must be now. Light me the lantern, and come with me. If you will
not, I will go alone.'
Francesco rose and dressed himself, and they went together to the
castle.
V
The walk took a quarter of an hour; the path was steep and badly paved.
Leonardo moved slowly, leaning on the young man's arm. It was a warm and
starless night, black as the pit. The boughs of the trees swayed
painfully under the gusts of wind. There were lights in the castle
windows, and music made itself heard. The king was supping late with a
small company, and amusing himself by making the young ladies of the
court drink from a silver cup chased with obscene figures. Among these
ladies was his sister Marguerite, called 'The Pearl of Pearls,' and
celebrated for her beauty and erudition. 'The art of pleasing was more
important to her than daily bread,' so said her admirers. At heart,
however, she was indifferent to all except her brother, to whom she was
devotedly attached. His weaknesses seemed to her charms, his vices
strength, his faun's mask the countenance of Apollo. For him she
declared herself ready not merely to scatter the ashes of her body to
the wind, but to sell her immortal soul. Francis abused her affection,
for he made use of her not only in difficulties and dangers, but also in
his amorous adventures.
Leonardo's coming was announced; and Francis, having sent for him to the
supper-room, advanced with his sister to greet him. The cavaliers and
court-ladies watched the artist's entry with glances half respectful,
half contemptuous. The tall old man, with the long hair, the melancholy
face, the nervous manner, seemed to have dropped from an alien sphere,
and sent a chill through the company as if he had come out of a
snowstorm.
'Ah! Maître Léonard!' cried the king with his customary cordiality, 'you
are a rare guest. What shall we offer you? You eat no flesh, I know; but
you will partake of sweetmeats and fruit?'
'I thank your Majesty. Sire, you will excuse me; I am fain to speak a
few words with your Majesty.'
Francis led him aside, and asked if Marguerite might be present.
'I venture to hope that her Highness will intercede for me,' said
Leonardo with a bow. Then he spread out his hands to the sovereign. 'I
come, sire, about my picture, which your Majesty has desired to buy--the
portrait of Monna Lisa.'
'Had we not agreed upon the price?' asked the king.
'I come not about money,' said Leonardo.
'Then what is the matter?'
The painter felt again that to speak of La Gioconda to this indifferent
affable young monarch was impossible. Nevertheless he forced himself to
say:--
'Sire, be merciful to me. Do not take this portrait from me. It shall be
yours; I ask no money for it. Only leave it with me till--my death.'
He paused, looking entreatingly at Marguerite.
The king shrugged his shoulders and frowned.
'Sire!' said the young lady, 'grant the prayer of Maître Léonard. He
deserves it! Be compassionate!'
'What, Madame Marguerite, are you on his side? A plot, I declare, a
plot! a plot!'
Laying her hand on her brother's shoulder, she whispered:--'Do you not
see? He still loves her!'
'But she is dead!'
'Do men never love the dead? You said yourself she lived in her
portrait! Leave him his memorial of her. Do not afflict the old man!'
Francis had a dim recollection of having somewhere heard of eternal
unions of soul, of fidelity, of love that had no grossness in it. He
felt inspired by magnanimity.
'You have a sweet intercessor, Maître Léonard. Be of good cheer. I will
do as you ask; only remember the picture belongs to me, and you shall
receive the money at once.'
Something wistful and plaintive in Leonardo's eyes touched the king, and
he tapped him good-naturedly.
'Fear not! I give you my word! None shall part you from your Lisa!'
Marguerite smiled and her eyes shone. She gave her hand to the painter,
who kissed it fervently and in silence.
The band struck up and dancing began. No one thought any more of the
uncourtly guest, who had come in like a shadow and vanished again into
the starless night.
VI
As soon as the king went away the usual quiet settled upon Amboise.
Leonardo worked on at his St. John, but as the picture advanced it
became more difficult, and his progress was less rapid. Sometimes in the
twilight he would lift the veil from the portrait of Monna Lisa, gaze
long at it, and then at St. John, which stood beside it. Apparently he
was comparing the two pictures. Francesco, watching breathlessly,
fancied at those times that the expression of the two faces, the woman's
and the youth's, mysteriously changed; they stood out from the canvas
like apparitions, and under the fixed gaze of the painter lived with a
supernatural life. St. John grew like Monna Lisa, and like Leonardo
himself, even as a son resembles his parents.
Meantime the Master's health was declining. Melzi begged him to rest and
leave his work, but this he resolutely refused to do. One day, in the
autumn of 1518, he was greatly indisposed. He desisted earlier than
usual from his work, and asked Francesco to help him to his bedroom. The
winding stair was steep, and often of late he had been unable to ascend
it without assistance. So Francesco supported him, and he went up
slowly, halting frequently to recover his breath. Suddenly he staggered
and fell into the young man's arms. Francesco called the old servant
Battista Villanis. Together they lifted the Master and carried him to
his bedroom.
He lay six weeks in bed, refusing all medical advice according to his
wont. His right side was paralysed, his right arm useless. The winter
found him better, but his recovery was slow. He was ambidextrous, but
required both hands at once for his work. With the left he drew, with
the right he painted; and he maintained that it was this division of
labour which had given him superiority over other painters. He feared
now that painting had become impossible to him. In the early days of
December he rose from his bed, and before long came downstairs to his
painting-room, but did not resume his work.
One day at the hour of siesta, Francesco, not finding him in the upper
rooms, cautiously opened the studio door and looked in. Of late Leonardo
had been increasingly disinclined to society; he spent many hours alone,
and would allow no one to enter unbidden. Francesco, peeping now through
the half-opened door, saw him standing before the picture of St. John,
and trying to paint with his disabled hand. His face was distorted by
the anguish of effort, the corners of his mouth drooped, the brows were
contracted, and the strands of grey hair, falling over his forehead,
were bathed in sweat. His fingers would not obey him, and the brush
shook in the hands of the great Master as in the hand of a clumsy
beginner. With bated breath Francesco watched this last struggle between
the living spirit and the dying body.
VII
That year the winter was very severe. Drifting ice broke the bridges of
the Loire, people were frozen on the roads, wolves came into the suburbs
of the town, and prowled even under the windows of the château. One
morning Francesco found a half-frozen swallow on the verandah and
carried it to Leonardo, who revived it with the warmth of his breath,
and established it in a cage near the fire, meaning to restore it to
liberty in the spring. The Master no longer attempted to paint, and had
hidden the unfinished picture with his brushes and paints in the darkest
corner of the studio. The days went by in idleness. Sometimes the notary
visited them and talked of the harvests, the salt tax, and the
comparative merits of Languedoc and Limousin sheep. Sometimes
Francesco's confessor came, Fra Guglielmo, an Italian by birth, but
long settled at Amboise, a simple pleasant old man, who could tell
stories about the Florence of his youth which made Leonardo laugh.
The early twilight came on, and the visitors took their departure. Then
for hours at a time Leonardo would pace up and down the room,
occasionally glancing at Astro. Now more than ever the cripple seemed to
him a living reproach, the mockery of the one great aim of his life, the
making of wings for men. Astro sat in a corner, his feet drawn up under
him, winding long strips of linen on a stick, whittling sticks, carving
tops, or with his eyes blinking he would rock himself slowly and,
smiling, sing his unchanging song:--
'Cucurlu! Curlu!
Eagles and cranes,
Up they flew!'
At last it became quite dark, and silence descended upon the house. Out
of doors the boughs of the old trees creaked and roared in the storm,
and the roar was like the voice of malignant giants. The eerie howling
of wolves was heard in the outskirts of the forest. Francesco piled logs
on the fire, and Leonardo sat down beside it. The young man played on
the lute and could sing very pleasantly. He tried to dispel the Master's
melancholy by his music; once he sang him an old song composed by
Lorenzo Il Magnifico for the 'Mask of Bacchus and Ariadne,' a favourite
with Leonardo, who had known it in his youth:--
'Quant' è bella giovinezza
Ma sen fugge tuttavia?
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;
Di doman non v'è certezza.'
The Master listened, greatly moved; he remembered the summer night, the
dark shadows, the brilliant moonlight in the lonely street, the sounds
of the lute from the marble loggia, the same tender love-song. And he
remembered, too, his thoughts of La Gioconda. Francesco, sitting at the
old man's feet, looked up and saw that tears were falling from the
fading eyes.
Sometimes Leonardo would read over his old diaries, and occasionally he
still wrote in them, but of the subject which now chiefly occupied his
thoughts--Death.
'Thou see'st that thy hope and thy desire to return to thy native land,
and to thy old life, is like the desire of the moth for the flame, and
that Man (who, ceaseless in desire, joyous in impatience, ever awaits a
new spring, and thinketh that his desire is slow in its fulfilment) does
not know that he expecteth but his own destruction and his end. But this
expectation is the quintessence of nature, the soul of the elements, and
finding itself in the soul of man, it is the desire to return from the
body unto Him who made it.'
'In nature nothing exists but Force and Movement; and force is the
volition of happiness, the eternal striving of the universe after final
equilibrium and the Prime Mover.'
'Every part desires to be united with its whole that it may escape
imperfection.'
'As the day well spent gives pleasant dreams, life well lived shall give
a happy death.'
'Every evil leaves bitterness in the memory, except the greatest evil,
which is death, for it destroys the memory together with the life.'
'When I thought I was learning to live, I was but learning how to die.'
'The outward necessity of nature corresponds with the outward necessity
of reason: everything is reasonable, all is good, because all is
necessary.'
Thus his reason justified death, the will of the Prime Mover; yet in the
depth of his heart something rebelled.
Once he dreamed that he awoke in a coffin buried alive under the earth,
and with desperate resolution and panting for breath he strove to raise
the lid of his prison.
Next morning he told Francesco of his desire that he should lie unburied
till the first signs of decomposition should show themselves. He still
loved life with a blind unreasoning love, still clung to it and dreaded
death as a black pit into which that day or the next he would fall with
a cry of the utmost terror. All the consolations of reason, all he had
said of divine necessity and the will of the Prime Mover, vanished like
smoke before this shrinking of the flesh. He would have relinquished his
immortality for one ray of earthly sunshine, one waft of the spring, for
the perfume of expanding leaves, for a bunch of yellow flowers from the
Monte Albano, where he had been a happy child.
At night, when he could not sleep, Francesco would read to him from the
Gospels. Never had they seemed to him so new, so rare in excellence, so
little understood of men. Some sayings, as he thought out their
meaning, deepened for him like wells.
"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Was this indeed the answer to
the question of his whole life, 'Shall not men have wings?'
"And having ended all his temptation, the devil departed from him _for a
season_." What did that mean? When did the devil return to him again?
Words which might have seemed to him full of the greatest error,
contrary to experience and natural law, still did not repel him.
'If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this
mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove.'
He had always thought that the final knowledge and the final faith would
lead by different paths to the same goal, the blending of outward and
inward necessity, the will of man and the will of God. Yet was not the
sting of the words in the fact that _to have faith_, even as a grain of
mustard-seed, was more difficult than to see the mountain remove unto
yonder place?
But there was a saying of Christ's still more enigmatical: "I thank
thee, Father, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes." How reconcile this with the
injunction, "Be ye wise as serpents"?
And, again, "Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not neither do
they spin. Take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we
drink, for after all these things do the Gentiles seek, and your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."
Leonardo recalled his discoveries and inventions, the machines for
giving men power over nature, and asked himself:--
'Is all this care for the body--what shall we eat and what shall we
drink, and the like--is it mammon worship? Is there nothing in human
toil, in knowledge, but the mere profit? Is knowledge like Martha, who
is careful and troubled about many things, but not about the one thing
needful? Is love like Mary, who has chosen the good part and sitteth at
the Master's feet?'
He knew by experience the temptations inseparable from knowledge.
It seemed to the dying man that he was already face to face with the
black, the dreadful pit, into which, if not to-day then to-morrow, he
too must fall with a last despairing cry:--
'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'
VIII
Sometimes of a morning, when he looked through the frosted windows at
the deep snow, the grey sky, the frozen water, he thought the winter
would never end. But in February there came a breath of warmth. Drops
trickled noisily from the icicles at the sunny side of the houses, the
sparrows twittered, and the trees were girt with dark circles where the
snow had melted, the buds swelled, and patches of blue sky were seen
among the clouds. Francesco placed his master's chair in a sunny window,
and for hours the old man would sit quite still with bent head, his
wasted hands resting upon his knees. The swallow which had been rescued
from the first frost now flew and circled about the room, perched on
Leonardo's shoulder, and allowed herself to be handled and kissed on the
head. Suddenly she would start up and again fly round the ceiling with
impatient cries as if scenting the spring. He followed every turn of her
lithe body, every movement of her pinions. The old idea of wings for men
stirred within him.
One day he opened a large chest which contained his manuscript-books,
stray drawings and sketches, chiefly mechanical, jottings from his two
hundred 'Books of Nature.' All his life he had been meaning to bring
order into this chaos, to sort the fragments and unite them in one
whole, one great 'Book of the Universe.' He knew that among them were
ideas and discoveries which could materially shorten the labours of
those men who were to come after him. He knew also that he had delayed
too long, that it was now too late, that all his sowing would fail of
fruit, that all his scientific material would perish like the
_Cenacolo_, the Colossus, the 'Battle of Anghiari.' And this, because in
science as in art he had only desired with a wingless desire, had begun
and not finished, had accomplished nothing. He foresaw that men would
seek what he had found, would discover what he had already discovered,
would walk in his paths, in his very steps; but would pass him by, would
forget him as though he had never lived. In the chest he found a small
manuscript-book, yellow with age, and entitled 'Birds.' Of late years he
had scarcely occupied himself with the flying-machine, though he still
often thought of it. To-day, watching the flight of his tame swallow, a
new idea had come to him, a new design had perfected itself in his mind,
and he determined to make a last attempt, indulging the last vain hope
that by the finally successful making of wings for men the whole labour
of his life would be justified.
He entered on this new task with the same resolution, with the same
feverish haste which he had expended on the St. John. Ceasing to brood
over death, conquering his weakness, forgetting his food and his sleep,
he sat for whole days and nights over his calculations and his drawings.
Francesco watching him sometimes feared this was not work but the
delirium of a sick mind. With increasing alarm he noticed how the
Master's face became distorted under the desperate effort of will, under
the violent desire for the impossible--which men may not seek with
impunity.
The week went by and Francesco never left him, not even to sleep. But a
night came when deadly weariness overcame the youth; he threw himself on
a chair by the fire and dozed. The morning came grey through the window,
the swallow wakened and chirruped. Leonardo was still sitting at his
work-table, a pen in his hand; he was greatly bent, his head almost
touching the paper. Suddenly he trembled strangely, the pen dropped and
his head fell. He made an effort to rise, tried to call Francesco, but
could make no sound. Heavily and helplessly he rolled with his whole
weight upon the table and overturned it. Melzi, awakened by the crash,
sprang to his feet, to find the Master lying on the floor, his candle
extinguished, his papers scattered, the terrified swallow flapping her
wings against the rafters overhead. He realised that this was a second
stroke.
For some days Leonardo lay unconscious, making occasional mutterings,
always of mathematics. When he came to himself he at once asked for his
sketches of the flying-machine.
'Nay, Master. Ask of me anything else, but I cannot let you work till
you have mended somewhat,' replied Francesco.
'Where have you put my sketches?' he demanded, angrily.
'I have locked them in the attic.'
'Give me the key.'
'Nay, Master, what can you do with the key?'
'Give it me this instant.'
Francesco hesitated; the invalid's eyes flashed with wrath. Not to
excite him, the young man gave the key. Leonardo hid it under his pillow
and seemed satisfied. His recovery after this was more rapid than could
have been hoped. In the beginning of April he was able again to play
chess with Fra Guglielmo.
One night Francesco, sleeping on his customary bench by the Master's
side, started up in alarm, for he could not hear Leonardo's usually
heavy breathing. The night-light had been extinguished; he relit it
hastily, and found the invalid's bed empty; he waked Villanis and they
visited all the rooms on that floor, but Leonardo was not there.
Francesco was going downstairs, when he remembered the sketches hidden
in the attic. He hastened thither and found the door unlocked. Leonardo,
half-dressed, was seated on the floor before an old box, which he was
using as a table. By the light of a tallow candle he was writing, while
he muttered rapidly as if delirious. His glowing eyes, his matted hair,
his brows violently contracted, his sunken helpless mouth, his whole
appearance was so strange and alarming to Francesco that for a few
minutes he dared not enter.
Suddenly Leonardo snatched up a pencil and drew it across a page of
figures so violently that it broke. Then he looked round, saw his pupil,
rose and tottered towards him.
'I told you, Francesco,' he said quickly and bitterly, 'that I should
soon make an end. Now I have finished. So have no fear, I shall not work
any more. 'Tis enough. I have grown old and dull; more dull than Astro.
I know nothing at all. What I have known I forget. Is it for me to think
of wings? To the devil even with the wings!'
And seizing his papers furiously he tore and trampled them.
From that day his health grew worse. He returned to his bed, and Melzi
foresaw that he would not again rise from it. Sometimes for whole days
he lay in a trance.
Francesco was devout, and whatever the Church taught he believed without
question. Alone of Leonardo's pupils he had not fallen under the
influence of those 'fatal spells'; that 'evil eye' attributed to the
Master. Though Leonardo did not observe the Church ceremonials, his
young companion divined by the instinct of love that he was not impious.
The lad did not try to penetrate further into the great man's opinions.
Now, however, the thought that he might die unabsolved from errors,
perhaps from heresies, was torture to the pious youth. He was afraid to
address the Master on the subject, but he would have given his life to
save him.
One evening Leonardo, seeing his anxious face, asked him what were his
thoughts. Francesco answered with some embarrassment.
'Fra Guglielmo came this morning and wanted to see you. I told him it
was impossible----'
The Master looked at his young attendant and saw alarm, entreaty, hope
on his face.
'Francesco, this was not what you were thinking. Why will you not tell
me?'
The pupil was silent, his eyes downcast. Leonardo understood; he turned
away and frowned. He had always wished to die as he had lived, in
complete liberty; in the truth, so far as he knew it. But he had
compassion on Francesco. Could he, in these last hours of his life,
embitter a simple heart, bring offences once more upon one of these
'little ones'?
He looked again at his pupil; laid his wasted hand on the lad's hand and
said with a quiet smile:--
'My son, send to Fra Guglielmo and bid him come to-morrow. I wish to
confess and to communicate. Send also for Maître Guillaume.'
Francesco did not answer--he kissed Leonardo's hand in passionate
gratitude.
IX
The next morning, Saturday in Passion Week, April 23rd, Maître Guillaume
the notary came, and Leonardo imparted to him his last wishes. He
bequeathed four hundred florins to his brothers in token of
reconciliation; to Francesco Melzi he left his books, scientific
apparatus, machines, manuscripts, and the remainder of the salary due to
him from the royal treasury; to Battista Villanis, his household
furniture, and the half of the vineyard outside the walls of Milan; the
other half he left to his pupil Andrea Salaino. Maturina was to have a
dress of good black cloth, a cloth cap trimmed with fur, and two ducats.
Melzi was named executor, and the ordering of the funeral was entrusted
to him. Francesco was solicitous that all should be arranged in a manner
to contradict popular slanders, and make it clear that the Master had
died a true son of the Catholic Church. Leonardo assented to all he
proposed.
Presently Fra Guglielmo came with the Holy Viaticum, and Leonardo made
his confession and received the Sacrament 'according to the rites of the
Church'; 'in all humility and submission to the will of God,' as the
monk afterwards told Francesco; adding that whatever might be said
against the Master he would be justified by the words of the Lord,
'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.' All day he
suffered from breathlessness, but he survived the night, and on the
morning of Easter Sunday seemed a little easier.
Francesco opened the window. Pigeons were flying in the blue air, and
the rustle of their flight mingled with the chime of the Easter bells.
The dying man no longer heard nor saw what was passing around him. He
imagined great weights falling and rolling on him and crushing him. With
an effort he freed himself and was flying upward on gigantic wings.
Again the weights fell, again he conquered them, and so on, again and
again. And each time the weight was heavier, the struggle to overcome it
more desperate; till at last he gave up the attempt, crying aloud a
despairing cry.
He resigned himself to defeat. And then immediately he realised that the
weights and the wings, the falling and the flight were all one; 'above'
and 'below' were the same, and he was borne along on the waves of
eternal motion gently as in a mother's arms.
For some days longer his body lived, but he never recovered
consciousness. On the morning of May 2nd Francesco and Fra Guglielmo
noticed that his breathing had grown feebler. The monk read the prayers
for the dying; a little later, and the young man had closed his eyes.
The face of the dead man changed but little; it wore the expression, so
frequent in his lifetime, of profound and quiet attention.
The windows were widely opened, and Francesco and the two old servants
were performing the last offices for the corpse. Suddenly the tame
swallow, which of late had been forgotten, flew into the room, circled
over the dead man, and settled at last upon his folded hands.
He was buried at the monastery of St. Florentine, but the exact site of
his grave is unknown.
Writing to Florence to the Master's brothers Francesco thus expressed
himself:--
'I cannot tell the grief occasioned to me by the death of him who was
more to me than a father. Long as I live I shall mourn him. He loved me
with a great and tender love. The whole world will grieve for the loss
of a man whose like Nature herself will not create again.
'May the Almighty God grant him everlasting peace!'
EPILOGUE
Now it so happened that just at the time when Leonardo da Vinci died, a
certain young Russian courtier named Eutychius came a second time to
Amboise in the train of Karachiarov, the Russian ambassador. On his
journey this young courtier, who brought a gift of gold and of priceless
Persian falcons for King Francis, visited Florence, and had seen the
bas-relief on the Campanile, which represented Dædalus experimenting
with waxen wings. It had given Leonardo in his boyhood the first idea of
Wings for Man; and now it was of interest to the young Russian, who in
his spare time, for pleasure, was painting an ecclesiastical icon of
'The Winged Precursor.' With vague and half-prophetic awe he
contemplated the contrast between the material wings constructed by
Dædalus, who was perhaps assisted by demons, and the spiritual
wings--'upon which pure souls rise to God'--of the 'Incarnate Angel,'
the Precursor, St. John the Baptist.
While at Amboise, Eutychius one day obtained leave to visit the château
of Cloux, where the deceased Master, Leonardo da Vinci, had lived. The
party was received by Francesco Melzi, who showed them the studio and
all it contained. They inspected the strange instruments, the apparatus
for the study of the laws of sound, the great crystal eye for
experiments on sight, the diving-bell, the anatomical drawings, the
designs for engines of war. All this was interesting; but for Eutychius
the supreme attraction was the broken frame of a wing resembling the
pinion of a great swallow. He learned from Melzi of its history and its
purpose; and strange thoughts rose in his breast as he remembered
Dædalus on the marble tower of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Presently he stood in bewilderment before the dead Leonardo's picture of
St. John the Baptist. The appearance of the Forerunner was almost that
of a woman; yet he carried the reed cross, and was clothed with camel's
hair. He was not like the Winged Precursor familiar to the painter of
icons; but his charm was irresistible. What was the significance of the
subtle smile with which he pointed to the cross of Golgotha?
Eutychius stood spell-bound, scarce listening to the animadversions of
his fellows. 'What? this beardless, naked, effeminate youth, the
Precursor? Not of Christ, then, but of Antichrist--accursed for ever!'
Eutychius heard without heeding; and when he came away the mysterious
figure of the wingless one, fair as a woman, with flowing locks like
Dionysus, pointing to the cross--haunted him like a vision.
The young Russian painter was lodged in an attic beside the dove-cot;
and had arranged his working place in the recess of the dormer-window.
He busied himself with the painting of the icon, already nearly
completed, of St. John the Baptist. The saint stood on a sunburnt hill,
round, like the edge of a globe. It was bordered by the purple sea, and
canopied by the blue vault of heaven. The figure carried in its hand a
head, which was the duplicate of his own, but seemed that of a corpse.
Thus Eutychius had tried to show that the man who has slain in himself
all that is human may attain to a more than human flight. His face was
terrible and strange; his gaze like the gaze of an eagle, fixed upon the
sun. His hair and beard floated on the blast, his raiment was like the
plumage of a bird. His limbs were long and gave an impression of
singular lightness. On his shoulder were set great swan-like wings,
extended over the tawny earth and the purple sea.
To-night Eutychius had little more to do than to touch the inner side of
the plumes with gold. But his attention wandered, he thought of Dædalus
and of Leonardo; he remembered the face of the wingless youth in the
Master's last picture, and found it eclipsing that of the winged one
which he had drawn himself. His hand grew heavy and uncertain; the brush
fell; his strength failed. He left his room and wandered for hours along
the banks of the silent river.
The sun had set; the pale green sky, the evening stars were reflected in
the water, but in the east clouds were rising, and summer lightning
quivered in the air as if waving fiery wings.
Returning, he lit the lamp before the icon of the Virgin, and threw
himself on his bed. He could not sleep, but lay tossing and shivering
feverishly for hour after hour, fancying weird rustlings and whispers in
the stillness, and remembering all the eerie tales of the Russian
folk-lore.
Wearied and wakeful, Eutychius tried to read. He selected an old book at
random, and the familiar Russian legend of the 'Crown of the Kingdom of
Babylon,' and of the world-wide sovereignty destined by God for the land
of Russia. Then Eutychius turned a page and read another legend, that of
'The White Hood.'
In days of yore Constantine the emperor, having accepted the Christian
faith and received absolution for his sins from Sylvester the pope,
desired to give the pontiff a kingly crown. But an angel, appearing unto
him, bade him give a crown not of earthly but of spiritual supremacy--a
White Hood like unto a monkish cowl. Nevertheless the Roman Church laid
claim to temporal no less than to spiritual power; wherefore the angel
appeared to the pope and commanded him to send the Hood to Philotheus,
the Patriarch of Constantinople; and when he would have retained it,
there appeared unto the Patriarch another vision: Constantine the
emperor and Sylvester the pope, bidding him send on the Hood yet
further, into the country of Russia, to Novgorod the Great.
'For,' said Sylvester in this dream, 'the first Rome has fallen by her
pride and self-will; and Constantinople, the second Rome, is like to
perish by the fury of the infidel; but in the third Rome, which shall be
in the land of Russia, the light of the Holy Ghost is already shining,
and at the last all Christian nations shall be united in the Russian
dominion under the shadow of the Orthodox faith.'
Each time Eutychius read these tales, a vague and boundless hope filled
his soul. His heart beat and his breath caught, as though he were
standing on the edge of a precipice. For it seemed that the legend of
the Babylonian kingdom was prophetic of earthly greatness; that of the
White Hood, of heavenly glory for his native land. However poor, however
wretched she might be now in comparison with other countries, still she
was to be the third Rome, the new Zion; and the rays of the rising sun
were destined to shine on the seventeen golden domes of the Russian
church of St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God. And yet, he asked himself, how
should it be that the White Hood, the third, the holiest Rome, should
unite itself with the hateful crown of Nebuchadnezzar, who had been
cursed of God, whose city was Babylon, and accursed in the Book of
Revelation. The young painter's effort to solve the riddle brought
fantastic vision to his hot brain.
He fell asleep, and he too dreamed a dream:
He saw a Woman in shining garments, with flaming countenance and fiery
wings, standing among fleeting clouds, her feet on the crescent moon;
over her was a seven-pillared tabernacle, with the inscription:--
'Wisdom hath builded her an house.'
Prophets and patriarchs surrounded her, saints and angels, thrones and
dominions and powers, and all the company of Heaven. And among the
prophets at Wisdom's very foot stood John the Precursor with his white
plumes as on the icon, _but wearing the face of Leonardo da Vinci_, who
had dreamed of wings for men. And behind the Woman, golden cupolas and
pinnacles of churches innumerable glowed like fire in the azure sky; and
beyond them stretched a gloriously boundless expanse, which Eutychius
recognised as the land of Russia.
Belfries shook with a triumphant peal; angels sang victorious Alleluia;
the seven archangels smote their wings, and the seven thunders spoke.
And above the fire-clothed Woman, Hagia Sophia, the Wisdom of God, the
heavens opened, and bright as the sun--terrible--shone the White Hood,
the heavenly head-dress, over the land of Russia.
* * * * *
Eutychius awoke. He opened the windows, and to him was wafted the
fragrance of leaves and grasses washed by rain. The sun had not yet
risen, but gold and purple decked the place of his coming--the skyey
verge above the woods, and the river, and the fields. The town still
slept in twilight; only the belfry of St. Hubert glistened with a pale
green light. The hush was full of great expectation. Far away on the
sand-banks of the Loire the white swans were calling.
Suddenly, like a live coal, the sun shone out behind the forest.
Something like music passed across the earth and the heaven. Pigeons
shook their wings and rose in circles. Day, entering the window, fell
full on the icon of the Forerunner; the wings, extended over lands and
seas, flashed and sparkled in the morning radiance, as if informed with
supernatural life.
Eutychius, dipping his brush into crimson, wrote these words on the
scroll upon the icon, under the Winged Precursor:--
"Behold I will send my messenger before my face, and he shall prepare my
way before me."
THE END
'THOU ART THYSELF THY GOD, THYSELF THY NEIGHBOUR:
O BE AS WELL THINE OWN CREATOR TOO;
BE THE ABYSS ABOVE, THE DEPTH BELOW;
AT ONCE THINE OWN END, AND THINE OWN BEGINNING.'
THE DEATH OF THE GODS
By DMITRI MÉREJKOWSKI
Author of "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci," etc.
Authorized English version by HERBERT TRENCH. 12^o. $1.50.
"A fine piece of work. Out of the perplexed chapters of Julian's
career, Mérejkowski has constructed something which might be called
a drama, full of episodes, lurid, intense, passionate ... with a
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writer is evidently a close and unwearied student."--_London Daily
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G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York London
The Romance of | The Forerunner
Leonardo da Vinci |
| (The Resurrection of the Gods)
By DMITRI MÉREJKOWSKI
Author of "The Death of the Gods," "Tolstoi as Man and Artist," etc.
12^o. $1.50.
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G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York London
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* * * * *
New York--G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS--London
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spellings, inconsistent uses of hyphens (e.g., "breeding
place" and "breeding-place"), and inconsistent proper names (e.g.
"Farfanicchio,", "Farfannicchio," and "Farfannichio") were not changed.