'Ha! of thy form thou art not ill-favoured, stranger,For woman's tempting!No wrestler thou, as show thy flowing locksDown 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.'
'Ha! of thy form thou art not ill-favoured, stranger,For woman's tempting!No wrestler thou, as show thy flowing locksDown 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.'
'Ha! of thy form thou art not ill-favoured, stranger,For woman's tempting!No wrestler thou, as show thy flowing locksDown 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.'
'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, allcuriosity, 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.'
After a tedious morning spent in touching for the king's evil, FrancisI.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 varieBien fol qui s'y fie!'
'Souvent femme varieBien fol qui s'y fie!'
'Souvent femme varieBien fol qui s'y fie!'
'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.
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 theartist'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.
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.
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 bybirth, 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!'
'Cucurlu! Curlu!Eagles and cranes,Up they flew!'
'Cucurlu! Curlu!Eagles and cranes,Up they flew!'
'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 giovinezzaMa sen fugge tuttavia?Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non v'è certezza.'
'Quant' è bella giovinezzaMa sen fugge tuttavia?Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non v'è certezza.'
'Quant' è bella giovinezzaMa sen fugge tuttavia?Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;Di doman non v'è certezza.'
'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 themoth 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 himfor 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 thatto 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?'
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 theCenacolo, 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 forgethim 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.
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; theother 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!'
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 wasnot 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 shouldit 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