IV

'Cucurlu! Curlu!Cranes and eaglesUp they flew!Up they flew,Cranes and eagles,—Cucurlu!'

'Cucurlu! Curlu!

Cranes and eagles

Up they flew!

Up they flew,

Cranes and eagles,—

Cucurlu!'

And then, looking at the Master, he would weep—a sight too painful for Leonardo to bear. He never deserted the broken creature, but cared for him, gave him money, and whenever possible kept him in his house. Years passed, and the cripple remained a living reproof, a mockery of his life-long effort, his fashioning of wings for men.

Scarce less distressed was Leonardo by the attitude of Cesare da Sesto, that one of his pupils who was perhaps nearest to his heart. Like Astro and Giovanni he was mentally crippled, anxious to stand alone, but overwhelmed by the Master's influence, and reduced to nullity. Not content to be an imitator, not strong enough to be independent, he wore himself out with fruitless fretting and impotent rage, incompetent either to save himself or to perish. He was one of those upon whom Leonardo was accused of having cast the Evil Eye.

Cesare was said to be in secret correspondence with Raphael, who was working at the frescoes of the VaticanStanze, and Leonardo sometimes thought treachery was meditated. But worse than the treachery of enemies was the so-called fidelity of friends. Under the name of theAccademia di Leonardo, a school of young painters had grown up in Milan, a few of them his pupils, the greater number newcomers, who clung to him like parasites, and persuaded themselves and others that they were following in his steps. He stood aloof, and watched them. At times disgust overwhelmed him when he saw how all that he had reverenced as great and sacred had become the property of the common herd; how the Lord's face in theCenacolowas copied till it was mere ecclesiastical commonplace; how the smile of La Gioconda was imitated, exaggerated, vulgarised, till it became stupid, if not sensual.

One winter's night Leonardo was sitting alone, listening to the shriek and roar of the storm; it was just such a night as that in which he had heard of Monna Lisa's death; he was thinking of her, and thinking of Death itself, of the last dread solitude in the bosom of ancient Chaos, of the infinite weariness of the world. There was a knock; he rose and opened the door. A young man entered, a lad of nineteen, with bright eyes, fresh cheeks reddened by the cold, melting snowflakes in his chestnut curls.

'Oh Messer Leonardo!' he exclaimed, 'do you not know me?'

Leonardo looked and recognised his little friend, the child with whom he had roamed the woods of Vaprio, Francesco Melzi. He embraced him with fatherly tenderness. The youth related how, after the French invasion of 1500, his father had taken his family to Bologna, and there had fallen sick of a malady which had lasted for long years. Now he was dead, and the son had hastened to Leonardo, remembering his promise.

'But what promise?' asked the painter, bewildered.

'Ah! you have forgotten! And I, poor simpleton, have been counting on it! Nay, then! do you not remember? You were carrying me in the mine at the foot of Monte Campione, and you told me how you were to serve Cæsar Borgia in Romagna. And I wept, and prayed you to take me with you, and you promised that after ten years' time, when I should be grown——'

'Ay! I recall it!' said Leonardo warmly.

'You see? Ah, Messer Leonardo, I know you have no need of me. But I will be no burden to you, I will not disturb you. Pr'ythee drive me not hence! If you drive me hence, I will not go! I will never leave you again!' cried the lad.

'My dear, dear boy!' said the Master, and his voice shook.

He embraced him again, and Francesco clung to his breast as he had done years ago when Leonardo had carried him into the subterranean darkness of the forgotten pit.

Since Leonardo had left Florence in 1507, he had been enrolled as court painter in the service of the French King, LouisXII.He had no fixed salary, but relied on the royal bounty. The treasurers frequently forgot him altogether, nor was he able to call opportune attention to himself by his productions, for as years increased upon him he worked less and less. He was consequently, as of old, in continual straits and entanglements; he borrowed wherever he could, and contracted new debts before he had paid off the old. He wrote the same timid, clumsy petitions to the French Viceroy and Treasurer as formerly to the officials of Ludovico Il Moro.

'Not wishing to fatigue your Excellency's generosity, I permit myself to request that I may receive a regular salary. More than once have I addressed your lordship on this subject, but hitherto have been vouchsafed no reply.'

In the ante-chambers of his patrons he quietly waited his turn among other suppliants, though with advancing years he increasingly knew—

'How salt another's bread is, and the toilOf going up and down another's stairs.'

'How salt another's bread is, and the toil

Of going up and down another's stairs.'

The service of princes was as bitter to him as had been the service of the republic; everywhere and always he felt himself a stranger. Raphael had become rich and splendid as a Roman patrician; Michelangelo was hoarding money against the evil days; Leonardo was still a homeless wanderer, not knowing where he could lay his head when he came to die.

Wars, victories, the defeat of his friends, changes ingovernments and laws, the enslaving of peoples, the chasing forth of tyrants—all that to the generality seems important, was to him as a whirl of dust to a wayfarer on a high road. With equal indifference he fortified the Castle of Milan for the French king against the Lombards, as once he had fortified it for the Duke of Lombardy against the French.

Trivulzio, the ambitious general, was intriguing against Massimiliano, and Leonardo saw the fate of the father, Il Moro, threatening Il Moretto. Wearied by these monotonous and arbitrary political changes, sickened by the manufacture of triumphal arches and the mending of the wings of the trumpery angels, he determined to leave Milan and pass into the service of the Medici.

In Rome, however—for Giovanni de Medici, having become pope, with the style of LeoX., had nominated his brother Giuliano as Gonfaloniere of the Holy Church. He had already gone to Rome, and it was arranged that Leonardo should join him in the autumn. He was to be both painter and 'alchemist' in Giuliano's service.

On the morrow of the day when the hundred and thirty-nine witches had been burned in the Piazza del Broletto, the monks of San Francesco had found Giovanni Boltraffio stretched senseless on the floor of Fra Benedetto's cell. Clearly he was suffering, as he had suffered fifteen years earlier, after having heard the tale of Savonarola's martyrdom. On this second occasion his recovery was rapid; nevertheless there were times when his unspeculative eye, his strangely impassive face inspired Leonardo with greater fear than during his long illness of years ago.

However that might be, on the 23rd of September 1513 Leonardo rode out of Milan for Rome to join his new patron Giuliano, with Francesco Melzi, Salaino, Cesare, Astro, and Giovanni.

La pazienza fa contra alle ingiurie non altrimenti che si faccino i panni contra del freddo; imperò che, se ti multiplicherai di panni secondo la multiplicazione del freddo, esso freddo nocere non ti potrà; similmente alle grandi ingiurie cresci la pazienza, essa ingiurie offendere non ti potranno la tua mente.—Leonardo da Vinci.(Patience acts against insults as garments act against cold. With the doubling of your misfortunes, put on a double cloak of endurance.)

(Patience acts against insults as garments act against cold. With the doubling of your misfortunes, put on a double cloak of endurance.)

Pope LeoX., true to the traditions of the house of the Medici, posed as patron of art and learning. When he heard of his own election he said to his brother:—

'Let usenjoythe papal power, since God has conceded it to us!'

And Fra Mariano, his favourite jester added:—

'Seek your own pleasure, Holy Father! All else is folly.'

The pope surrounded himself with poets, musicians, painters, and scholars. A golden age had dawned for imitative men of letters, who had one unassailable article of faith, the perfection of Cicero's prose and of Virgil's poetry.

The shepherds of Christ's flock avoided the mention of His name, because it was a word unknown to Cicero'sOrations. They called nuns, vestals; the Holy Ghost, the Inspiration of the Supreme Jove; and they requested the Pope to include Plato in the roll of saints. Bembo, a future cardinal, owned that he did not read the Epistles of Paul (he called themEpistolaccie) lest he should spoil his style. When FrancisI.asked for the Laocoön, LeoX.replied that he would sooner give him the head of Peter the Apostle.

The pope loved his scholars and artists, his poets andpedants; but above all he loved his jesters. He solemnly crowned Cuerno, the celebrated rhymster and drunkard, and was no less liberal to him than to Raphael. He spent huge sums on feasts, though he ate sparingly himself, being afflicted with a weak digestion, and an incurable purulent disease; and his soul was no less sick than his body, for he suffered from continualennui.

When Leonardo first presented himself at the Vatican he was told that his only hope of obtaining audience of His Holiness was to declare himself a buffoon. He did not follow this good advice, and failed of admission time and again. Of late he had experienced strange forebodings which he tried to put from him as senseless and absurd. It was not anxiety as to his affairs which oppressed him; nor was it his failure to gain adequate recognition from LeoX.or Giuliano de' Medici. He had been too long used to annoyances of this kind. But his vague disquiet, his ominous apprehension, continually increased; till one radiant autumn evening, as he was returning from the Vatican, his heart sank, under the pressure of imminent catastrophe.

He was living in the same house where he had lived during his former visit to Rome; one of the small detached buildings behind St. Peter's, which had belonged to the Papal Mint. It was old and gloomy, and having been unoccupied for several years was exceedingly damp. He entered a large vaulted apartment with cracks on walls and ceiling, and windows overshadowed by the wall of the adjoining house.

In the corner sat Astro the imbecile, his feet drawn up under him, his hands busy whittling sticks, while he purred his monotonous lullaby—

Cucurlu, curlu!Eagles and cranesUp they flew!

Cucurlu, curlu!

Eagles and cranes

Up they flew!

Leonardo's anxiety perceptibly increased.

'What's the matter, Astro?' he asked kindly, laying his hand on the cripple's head.

'Nothing,' said Astro, with a curious look of intelligence, 'nothing with me. It's Giovanni. But it's all the better for him. He has flown away.'

'Giovanni? Where is Giovanni?' cried Leonardo, suddenly realising that his forebodings had centred on thisunhappy disciple. 'Astro! I implore you, my friend, try to remember! Where is Giovanni? I must see him at once. Where is he? What has happened?'

'Don't you understand?' muttered Astro, vainly seeking for the right words. 'He is up there—he has escaped—flown away. You don't understand? I will show you then. It is better for him to have flown away.'

He rolled himself to his feet and shuffled along on his crutches, leading his master up the creaking stair to the attic, where the sun burned hot on the tiled roof, and the sunset rays shone upon the dormer-window. As they entered, startled pigeons fluttered their wings noisily and flew away.

'There he is,' said Astro, simply, and pointed to a dark corner. Leonardo saw the figure of Giovanni, apparently standing, very erect and quite motionless, his widely opened eyes staring fixedly straight before him. 'Giovanni!' cried Leonardo, with shaking voice, a cold sweat bursting out on his forehead.

He drew nearer; saw that the face was strangely distorted; touched the nerveless hand, and felt it cold. The body oscillated heavily to and fro. Giovanni had hanged himself from an iron hook lately inserted for mechanical purposes into the cross beam; and by means of a strong silken cord, one of the attachments of the flying machine.

Astro had fallen back into his torpor, and was looking serenely out of the window. The house stood high, and commanded a view of the tiled roofs, the domes and towers of Rome, of the Campagna spreading like a sea, traversed by long lines of ruined aqueducts, of the hills of Albano and Frascati, of the clear sky where the swallows swooped and circled. Astro watched them, and smiled, and waved his arms joyously as if imitating their flight.

Cucurlu!Up they flew!Curlu!

Cucurlu!

Up they flew!

Curlu!

he crooned contentedly.

Leonardo stood, still as a stone, between his two disciples, the imbecile and the suicide.

A few days later he found Giovanni's diary and read it attentively.

'The white witch!' always and everywhere! May she be accursed. The last mystery: two shall be in one. Christ and Antichrist are one. The heaven above—the heaven below!

'No! No! This shall not, must not be! Rather, death!'

'Into thy hands I commit my spirit, O God! Be thou my Judge!'

There came an abrupt end to the entries. Leonardo understood that these words had been penned on the day of the writer's suicide.

After the death of Giovanni, Leonardo wearied of his life in Rome. Uncertainty, waiting, forced inaction enervated him. His usual occupations, his books, machines, experiments, paintings failed in interest. LeoX.had not yet found time to receive him, nor to give him the order for a painting. However, he set the artist to the mechanical task of perfecting the coining mill for the Papal Mint. Leonardo despised no work, however humble; he did what was required, and devised new machinery, by means of which the coins, uneven and jagged before, were cut perfectly true. The artist was at this time overwhelmed with debts, and the greater part of his salary went in the payment of the interest on his borrowings. But for the generosity of Francesco Melzi, who had inherited property from his father, he would have been in extreme want.

In the summer of 1514 he was attacked by the malaria. It was his first serious illness. He refused doctors and medicines, but allowed Francesco to wait upon him. Every day he became more attached to this lad, and felt that God had sent him a guardian angel, a prop for his old age. Men seemed to be forgetting him, but from time to time he made attempts to remind them of his existence. From his sick-bed he wrote to Giuliano de' Medici with striving after the fashionable compliments which did not come easily to his lips or pen.

After much rain the end of November brought sunny days, never so beautiful as in Rome, where the decaying splendourof autumn harmonises well with the ruined glories of the Eternal City.

One morning Leonardo went with Francesco to see the Sistine Chapel and the frescoes of Michelangelo; a visit long purposed, but deferred as if from a secret sense of fear.

The chapel is a long, narrow, very lofty building, with plain walls and Gothic windows. Buonarroti had covered the ceiling and arches with biblical scenes. Leonardo looked, and staggered, as if faint; whatever his secret expectation, he had never thought to behold such potency of art.

In face of the colossal figures, sublime as the visions of delirium—the God of Sabaoth dividing light from darkness in the bosom of Chaos, blessing the waters and plants, creating Adam from the earth, and Eve from Adam's rib—in face of the representations of the Fall, the Redemption and all the incidents of Scripture history; in face of the beautiful nude youths, spirits of the elements accompanying the tragedy of the Universe, the conflict of God and Man, with eternal dancing and song; prophets and sibyls, terrible giants that seemed weighed down with more than human wisdom and with more than human woe; the ancestors of the Messiah, a long file of obscure patriarchs passing on from one to the other the purposeless burden of life, awaiting in darkness the coming of the unknown Redeemer;—in face of these stupendous creations of his rival Leonardo did not measure, nor compare nor judge; he felt himself and his work annihilated.

He enumerated his own productions; theCenacolo, which was perishing, the Colossus, which had been destroyed, the 'Battle of Anghiari,' and an endless number of other unfinished paintings; a succession of vain endeavours, ridiculous failures, inglorious defeats. He had spent his life in beginning, intending, making ready; he had achieved nothing. Why deceive himself? It was too late now; he would never accomplish anything. His life had been expended in incredible labour; yet now at its close he felt like the slothful servant in the parable who had buried his talent in the earth.

Yet he was conscious that he had aimed at something higher than this other man; to Michelangelo all was turmoil, chaos; Leonardo had seen, and had tried to show, the eternal harmony. He remembered Monna Lisa's parable of the mighty wind, and of the still small voice where the Lord was; he felt that she had discerned a truth, that sooner or laterthe human mind would return to the path he had shown, the path from discord to harmony, from division to unity, from storm to quietness. The consciousness of how entirely right he had been in theory made still more painful to him, the consciousness of impotence in action.

They left the chapel in silence. Francesco ventured no questions; but he fancied that the Master had suddenly aged, had become feeble and broken. Years had apparently passed since they had entered the chapel.

Crossing the Piazza of St. Peter's, they went by the Borgo Nuovo towards the bridge of St. Angelo. Leonardo was thinking of another rival whom he had perhaps no less reason to fear, Raphael Sanzio. He had seen the young painter's newly finished frescoes in the Stanze of the Vatican, and had felt unable to decide whether the greatness of the execution were not equalled by the poverty of the conception, the perfection of eye and hand by the servile flattery of the princes of this world. JuliusII.had dreamed of expelling the French from Italy; therefore Raphael had shown him watching the expulsion of Heliogabalus from the profaned temple of the most high God. LeoX.posed as a great orator; therefore Raphael celebrated him in the person of Leo the Great, warning Attila to retreat from Rome. He had been taken prisoner by the French and had escaped; Raphael represented this by the miraculous deliverance of St. Peter. Thus he degraded his art into the nauseous incense of a courtier's flattery.

This stranger from Urbino, this dreamy youth with the face of a sinless angel, had managed his mundane affairs to the best advantage. He painted the stables of Chigi the banker; made designs for the table-service of gold which, after the entertaining of the Holy Father, the banker threw into the Tiber, that it might never be used by any one less illustrious. The 'fortunate boy,' as Francia called the young painter, acquired fame and wealth as if by play. He disarmed his worst enemies by kindliness; he was what he appeared to be, the friend of all. In everything he succeeded. The gifts of Fortune dropped unsought into his hands. He replaced Bramante on the architectural conclave for the building of the new cathedral; Cardinal Bibbiena offered him his niece in marriage; it was said he had been promised a cardinal's hat. He built a dainty mansion in the Borgo, andfurnished it with regal splendour. His ante-chamber was crowded with official personages, and with envoys from abroad, who either wanted their portraits painted, or desired to take home some specimen of the great man's art. He was overwhelmed with patrons and refused new ones. They insisted. Time was wanting to execute his innumerable orders, and many of his pictures were chiefly painted by his pupils. His studio became a factory where such skilful workmen as Giulio Romano turned canvas and paint into ready-money with amazing facility. He himself apparently desisted from the search after perfection, and was content with popularity. He served the people, and they accepted him enthusiastically as their chosen, their beloved, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, the incarnation of their own spirit.

The worst of it was, that in his fall he was still great; a seduction not only to the vulgar herd, but also to the elect. He seemed unspoiled by the glittering baubles showered on him by Fortune. He remained innocent and pure. Thefortunato garzonehad no consciousness of the danger for himself and for art. For in this superficial harmony, in this pseudo-reconciliation of discordant elements, there was greater danger for the future than in the chaos and contradictions and wars introduced by Michelangelo. Leonardo could see nothing beyond the work of these two painters; after them, all seemed abysmal and void. He felt how much both owed to himself. From him they had had their science of light and shade, their anatomy, their perspective, their knowledge of Nature and of man. Yes, they had grown out of him; and now the two of them, they had destroyed him! Leonardo walked silently beside his young companion, his eyes downcast, his head bent, his face intensely sorrowful andold: he seemed in a trance.

As they approached the bridge, they had to draw aside to give room to a cavalcade—some great man, a cardinal, perhaps, or an ambassador, escorted by sixteen horsemen richly attired. The personage proved a young man, sumptuously clad, riding a grey Arab with gilded and jewelled trappings. His face seemed familiar; and suddenly Leonardo remembered the pale shy youth in the girlish frock, daubed with paint and worn into holes at the elbow, who eight years before had said, 'Michelangelo is not worthy to tie the latchet of your shoe!'

Now this boy was the rival both of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and was called 'the God of Painting'!

His face, though still boyish, innocent, and unseared by emotion, was somewhat less of a seraph's. He was a man of the great world now; riding from his villa in the Borgo to an interview with the pope, he was accompanied by a troop of pupils, admirers, and friends. Indeed he never went out with an escort of less than fifteen. His every ride seemed a triumphal procession.

He recognised Leonardo; flushed slightly, and with quick, even exaggerated respect, doffed his cap and bowed. His younger pupils looked wonderingly at the old man to whom the 'Divine One' showed so much respect; the quiet shabby old man, hugging the wall to let the cavalcade dash by.

Leonardo's attention was caught by the man riding at Raphael's side, apparently the most favoured of his pupils. It was Cesare da Sesto. Leonardo gazed in amazement, scarce able to believe his eyes. Now he understood Cesare's long absence, Francesco's clumsy explanation. The last of his disciples, he whom he had trusted to follow in his footsteps and carry on his method, had deserted and betrayed him. Cesare braved his gaze without flinching; nay, it was Leonardo whose eyes fell in confusion, as if guilty before the other of some unintended crime.

The cavalcade passed on, and the old man, leaning upon Francesco, went his way. They crossed Hadrian's bridge, and went by the Via dei Coronari to the Piazza Navona, where was the bird fair. Leonardo bought magpies, finches, thrushes, pigeons, a falcon, and a young wild swan. He spent all the money he had with him, and borrowed also of Francesco. Slung from head to foot with cages, the quaint pair attracted general attention. The passers-by stared curiously, the little boys ran after them. They walked past the Pantheon and Trajan's Forum, crossed the Esquiline, and left the town by the Porta Maggiore, following the ancient Roman road called the Via Labicana. Presently they turned into a narrow footpath leading into the solitude of the wild country. Before them spread the boundless, the silent, the monotonous Campagna; through the arches of the Claudian Aqueduct, low hills were seen, uniform grey-green, like sea waves in the light of evening; here and there was a solitary tower, the deserted nest of robber knights; misty bluemountains surrounded the great plain, like the tiers of a colossal amphitheatre.

Over the city brooded the great peace of autumn twilight. The last rays of the sun, streaming from between heavy clouds, lay across the landscape in broad zones of brilliance, and shone on a herd of white cattle, which scarce turned their heads at the sound of footsteps. The chirp of the grasshopper, the rustle of the breeze in the stalks of the withered summer flowers, the dull sound of the distant bells, but enforced the stillness; it seemed that here in this immense plain, so desolate so solemn, had already been fulfilled the prophecy of the angel who swore by him that liveth for ever and ever, there should be time no longer. They chose a convenient hillock, and relieved themselves of the cages; then Leonardo set the birds free.

As they flew away, with the joyous flutter and rustle of their wings, he followed them with loving eyes. He smiled, he forgot his griefs, and was happy as in his childhood. Only the falcon and the swan were still in their cages; their emancipation was reserved for a later hour.

Now he and Francesco ate a frugal supper of bread, chestnuts, dried cherries, cheese, a flask of the golden Orvieto wine. They were still silent. Francesco glanced at his master from time to time. Leonardo's hair was silvered and thin, his forehead lined, his deep-set eyes were still luminous and thoughtful, but weary. Age had set its effacing finger on the beauty of every feature. It was the face of an enfeebled, patient Titan.

Francesco pitied him, as he pitied all persons who were lonely and sorrowful. The Master, whom of all men he admired and loved, whom he set above the Michelangelo and the Raphael of the people's applause, was but a lonely and poor and despised old man, sitting on the grass among empty bird-cages, cutting his cheese with an old broken clasp-knife, chewing his bread with an effort because his jaws were weakened by age, his appetite lost by recent illness. A lump rose in Francesco's throat, and he would gladly have knelt and assured his friend of his devotion, but he did not do so—he lacked the courage. At all times, even to those who loved him the best, Leonardo showed something alien and unapproachable.

The modest supper ended, Leonardo rose, let loose the hawk, then opened the last and largest cage, that onecontaining the wild swan. The great white bird came out noisily, stood dazzled for a minute flapping its wings, then flew straight towards the sun. Leonardo watched it with eyes full of unspoken grief. It was grief for the idle dream of his whole life, for the human wings, for the 'Great Bird' of which he had written in his diary: 'Man shall fly like a mighty swan.'

At last the Pope, yielding to the persuasions of his brother Giuliano, ordered a small picture from Leonardo. As usual he hesitated, put off beginning from day to day, spent his time in preliminary attempts, in perfecting his paints, in the invention of a new varnish.

His Holiness exclaimed in mock despair—

'Alack! this dull fellow will never perform anything; he studies the end before he has mastered the beginning.'

The saying was repeated by the courtiers, and all over the town, and it sealed the fate of the painter. Leo, the supreme judge in matters of art, had pronounced sentence. Hence-forward Raphael, Buonarroti, Bembo the pedant, and Baraballo the buffoon, need fear no rivalry; the pope had jested, and the painter's reputation was crushed. The world forgot him, as it forgets the dead. When some one repeated Leo's witticism for his entertainment, he smiled indifferently, as if mockery were no worse than he had expected. That night however, he wrote in his diary:—

'Patience is to the injured what clothes are to the frozen. With keener cold, augment your clothing and it shall not hurt you; with the increase of humiliation, double your cloak of patience.'

LouisXII., King of France, died in 1515. Having no son, his crown passed to his nearest relative, Francis of Valois, Duke of Angoulême, who assumed the title of FrancisI.

The young king at once took the field for the reconquest of Lombardy. He crossed the Alps, appeared suddenly in Italy, gained a victory at Marignano, deposed Il Moretto, and entered Milan in triumph. About the same time Giuliano de' Medici left Rome for Savoy, and Leonardo, out of favour with the Pope, determined to try his fortune with the new sovereign. In the autumn he went to Pavia to thecourt of Francis. Here the conquered were celebrating the conquest and the glory of the conqueror, and Leonardo was at once invited to arrange the festival, his reputation as mechanician in the time of Il Moro being remembered. He agreed; and amongst other things constructed a lion which ran automatically across the hall, stood rampant before the king, and opened his breast, from which fell a shower of the whitefleurs de lys. This toy made Leonardo more famous than all his great works, inventions, and discoveries. Francis was anxious to see Italian scholars and artists at his court, but the pope refused to spare either Michelangelo or Raphael, so Leonardo was offered a salary of seven hundred crowns and the little château of Cloux, in Touraine, near the town of Amboise, between Tours and Blois.

The artist accepted the offer; and in the sixty-fourth year of his life began once more his endless wandering; left his country without hope of return, and settled in the foreign land. He was accompanied by Francesco Melzi, Zoroastro, and his old servants, Battista de Villanis and the fat cook Maturina.

The road, especially in winter, was difficult; it led through the passes of Piedmont and Mont Cenis. Early, while it was still dark, they left Bardonecchia, so as to cross the Alps before nightfall. The mules clattered their hoofs and jangled their bells as they clambered along a narrow path skirting the ravine. Spring had descended upon the southern valleys, but up here winter reigned supreme. The morning was just breaking; against the faintly tinted sky the Alps shone as if lighted by internal fire. Leonardo, wishing to see more of the mountains, left his beast, and with Francesco followed a steeper path at a little distance from the mule track. Perfect stillness surrounded them, only interrupted by the distant long-drawn roar of an avalanche. They scrambled higher, Leonardo leaning on the young man's arm. Francesco remembered the descent of the iron-mine when the Master had carried him, now it was he who supported the Master.

'Oh, Messer Leonardo!' he cried suddenly, pointing to the ravine below, 'look at the valley of the Dora! We see it for the last time! We are almost at the summit, and weshall not see it again! Yon lies all Lombardy! Italy!' he cried, his eyes wet with conflicting emotions; and he repeated, 'Lombardy! Italy! For the last time!'

The Master's face remained unmoved. He looked, then turned silently and pressed onward towards the snows. Forgetting his weariness, he now walked so quickly that Francesco, who had lingered bidding farewell, was left behind.

'Nay, Master, whither go you?' he cried. 'There is no path there; you can ascend no higher. I pray you take heed!'

But Leonardo went on, higher and higher, his step firm and light, as if his feet were winged.

Against the pale sky the icy masses towered one above the other; a stupendous wall raised by God between two worlds. They beckoned to Leonardo and drew him up and onwards. It seemed as if behind them rose the last secret,—which alone could satisfy his soul. Divided from him by impassable gulfs, they appeared near, almost within touch. They looked at him as the dead look at the living; they smiled at him with the smile of Monna Lisa.

His pale face lighted with the same glow that was shining upon the mountains and the ice. To him the thoughts of death and of Monna Lisa were now but one.

Φέρειϛ Πτέρυγας ὠς ισωθεἰς ἀγγέλοις.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.)

Φέρειϛ Πτέρυγας ὠς ισωθεἰς ἀγγέλοις.

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.)

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 wasbourgeois, 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 FrancisI.assigned as lodging to Leonardo da Vinci.

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 fromNorthern 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'sCommedia, 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. JuliusII.had treacherously handed Cæsar over to his enemies, who had carried him toSpain 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.

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 LeoX. 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 thevoice 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, theBacchæ, 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.

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