V

Quanto è bella giovinezza!Ma sen fugge tuttaviaChi vuol esser lieto siaDi doman non v'è certezza.(Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness:He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)

Quanto è bella giovinezza!Ma sen fugge tuttaviaChi vuol esser lieto siaDi doman non v'è certezza.

Quanto è bella giovinezza!

Ma sen fugge tuttavia

Chi vuol esser lieto sia

Di doman non v'è certezza.

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

(Fair-fleeting Youth must snatch at happiness:

He knows not if to-morrow curse or bless.)

The last line lingered sadly in his ears with mournful foreboding.

Already on the threshold of old age, and approaching darkness and solitude, had not Fate sent him at last a living soul, a kindred soul? Must he repulse it? must he deny it? sacrifice life for contemplation, as he had so often done before? renounce the near for the faraway, thereal for the ideal? Which was he to choose, the true and living and mortal Gioconda or the immortal, which had no material existence? They were equally dear to him, yet he must choose between them; choose at once, for her sake. But his will was weak. He could arrive at no decision, and wandered on aimlessly through the streets, debating, debating with himself.

Presently he reached the house of Piero Martelli, where he lodged. The doors were shut, the lights extinguished. He raised the hammer hung on a chain, and knocked. The porter did not come. Repeated blows were only answered by echoes from the sounding arches of the stone staircase. Echoes died away and silence succeeded, seeming the more profound for the brightness of the moonlight.

A clock boomed from a neighbouring tower. The heavy measured clanging told of the silent and dreadful flight of time, of the darkness and loneliness of age, of the past which could never return. And long did the last clang vibrate in the moonlit stillness, quivering on the air, now weakening, now strengthening again in ever widening waves of sound, as if repeating—

Di doman non v'è certezza.

The next day, at her habitual hour, Monna Lisa came to the studio for the first time unaccompanied. She knew it was their last interview. It was a brilliant morning, and Leonardo lowered the canvas curtain to produce that dim and tender light, transparent as submarine shadows, which gave her face its greatest charm.

They were alone.

He kept working on in silence, calm and absorbed, forgetting his thoughts of the previous night, forgetting the parting, the inevitable choice. Past and Future had alike vanished from his memory; time had come to a standstill; it seemed as if she had always sat, and would ever thus sit before him, with that calm strange smile. What he could not do in life he did by imagination; he blended the two images in one—mingled the reality and its reflection—the living woman and the immortal.

He had now the sense of a great deliverance. He nolonger either pitied her or feared her. He knew her submissiveness, that she would accept all, endure all; die, perhaps, but never revolt. And momently he looked at her with that curiosity which had taken him to the execution of the condemned, that he might watch the last shudders of fear on the dying faces.

Suddenly he fancied that a strange shadow, as of an unbidden thought, which he had not evoked, which he wished away, appeared upon her countenance, like the cloud of human breath upon the surface of a mirror. To preserve her, to recall her anew to the Type, within the fatidic circle, to banish from her this human shadow, he related gravely, like a magician pronouncing an incantation, one of his mystic tales.

'Unable to resist the desire of beholding new forms, the secret creations of nature, I at length reached the cavern, and there at the entrance stood still in terror. I stooped, the left hand on the right knee, and shading my eyes with my hand to accustom myself to the darkness, I presently took heart and entered, and moved forward for several steps. Then, frowning, straining my sight to the utmost, I unwittingly changed my course and wandered hither and thither in the darkness, feeling my way and groping after the definite. But the obscurity was overpowering, and when I had passed some time in it, Fear and Curiosity contended most mightily within me: fear of searching that dark cavern, and curiosity after its secret.'

He was silent. The unwonted shadow lay still upon her face.

'Which of the two feelings gained the day?' La Gioconda murmured.

'Curiosity.'

'And you learned the stupendous secret?'

'I learned ... what could be learned.'

'And will reveal it to men?'

'I would not, nor could not, reveal all. But I would inspire them also with curiosity strong enough to vanquish fear.'

'And if curiosity be not enough, Messer Leonardo?' she said slowly, an unwonted fire in her eyes; 'if something further, a profounder feeling, were needed to lay bare the cavern's last and greatest treasure?'

And she turned toward him a smile he had never seen before.

'What more is needed?' he asked.

She was silent. Just then a slender blinding ray shone through a rent in the curtain; the dimness vanished; the mystery, the clear shadows, tender as distant music, fled.

'You leave to-morrow?' she said suddenly.

'No. To-night.'

'I, too, am soon departing.'

The artist looked at her steadily, attempted speech, and said nothing. He devined her meaning; that she would not stay in Florence without him.

'Messer Francesco,' she continued, 'goes presently for three months to Calabria. I have asked him to take me with him.'

He frowned. This sunshine was not to his mind; the fountain had been ghostly white; now it had taken the rainbow hues of life. Leonardo felt that he was returning to life, timid, weak, pitiable.

'No matter,' said Monna Lisa, 'draw closer the curtain. It is early yet. I am not tired.'

'I have painted enough,' he said, throwing down his brush.

'You will not finish my portrait?'

'Why not?' he cried hastily, as if alarmed. 'Will you not come to me when you return?'

'I will come. But shall I be the same? You have told me that faces, especially the faces of women, quickly change.'

'I long to finish it. But sometimes to me it seems impossible?'

'Impossible?' wondered La Gioconda. 'Ay, they tell me you finish nothing because you are always seeking the impossible.'

In these words he fancied a tender reproach.

'The moment has come!' he thought.

She rose and said with her usual calm:—

'Farewell, Messer Leonardo. I wish you a good journey.' He also had risen, and looking at her he saw again helpless entreaty and reproach on her face. He knew that this moment was irrevocable for both—final and solemn as death. He felt he must break this pregnant silence, yet no words came to him. The more he forced his will to find a solution, the more he was conscious of his own powerlessness and the profundity of the abyss which must divide them. MonnaLisa still smiled her quiet smile; that calmness, that brightness, seemed to him now the smile of the dead. Intolerable pity filled his heart and weakened him still more.

She stretched out her hand; he took it and kissed it for the first time since he had known her. As he did so she bent quickly, and he felt that La Gioconda touched his hair with her lips.

'May God have you in his keeping,' she said simply.

When he recovered from his wonder—she was gone. Around him was the dead silence of a summer afternoon, more menacing than midnight. Again he heard the heavy measured clanging of the clock, telling of the irremediable flight of time, of the darkness and loneliness of age, of the past, which can return no more. And as the last vibrations died away the words of the plaintive love song echoed in his ears:—

'Di doman non v'è certezza.''And count not on the day to come.'

'Di doman non v'è certezza.'

'And count not on the day to come.'

Learning that Messer Giocondo was not returning from Calabria till October, Leonardo deferred his return to Florence for ten days that he might not reach the city till Madonna Lisa was there. He counted the hours till that moment should arrive; superstitious dread oppressed his heart when he remembered that accident might easily prolong the separation. He strove not to think; he asked no one for news lest he should hear something disappointing.

At last the day came, and he reached Florence early in the morning. Autumnal, damp and dull, the city yet seemed especially fair. It spoke to him of La Gioconda. It was one ofherdays; misty, transparent, with subdued light, as of sunlight seen through water.

He no longer asked himself how they would meet, what he should say, nor how he must act that they might part no more, that he might keep her for ever as his only friend, the sister of his soul.

'Things turn out best when one does not think too much. The great thing is, not to think,' he said to himself, quoting the lad Raphael. 'I will question her; and she will tell me all which that day we left unsaid; she will explain what morethan curiosity is necessary if one is to discover the marvel of the cavern.'

Gladness filled his soul as if he were a boy of sixteen with his life before him; yet deep down under this gladness there lingered a half unconscious presentiment of mishap.

In the evening he visited Machiavelli, intending to go to Messer Giocondo's house next day. Impatience, however, overcame him, and he decided to call at once and ask for news from the porter of Madonna Lisa's safe arrival. He went down the Via Tornabuoni towards the Ponte Santa Trinità, the same route, though in the opposite direction, which he had followed the night before his departure. The weather had suddenly changed, as often happens in Florence on autumn evenings. The north wind, piercing as a knife, blew down the valley of the Mugnone, and the crest of the Mugello was whitened with snow. In the town it was raining; but just above the horizon there remained a narrow strip of clear sky, and from it the sun suddenly burst forth, flooding the wet streets and shining roofs and the faces of the passers-by with a harsh yellow light. The rain seemed like copper dust, and the glass of distant windows glowed like live coals.

Near the bridge and opposite the church of Santa Trinità, in the angle formed by the river bank and the Via Tornabuoni, rose the imposing Palazzo degli Spini, built of large warm-grey stones, with barred lancet windows and castellated roof like a fortress. Down below was the customary row of stone benches, where the citizens congregated to tell the news, to sun or to shade themselves, to play at dice or draughts. There was a loggia at the other side of the palace, looking out upon the Arno.

As he passed, Leonardo saw in this loggia a group of persons, strangers to him for the most part, disputing so vehemently that they did not notice the storm.

'Messer Leonardo! come hither and resolve our question!' they called to him. He stopped. The dispute was about certain lines in the thirty-fourth canto of Dante'sInferno, where Lucifer is described buried breast-high in the ice at the very bottom of the accursed Pit.

The matter was expounded to Leonardo by one of the disputants, a rich old wool merchant. The artist, however, was but half attending, for his eyes were fixed on a man coming along the Lungarno Acciaioli. This person walkedheavily, shambling like a bear: he was bent and bony, with a large head, black hair, and ill-shaped beard; his clothes were poor and carelessly thrown on. He had a broad-browed heavy face, with projecting ears and a broken nose. His small eyes dilated and glowed strangely under excitement, and much night-work had reddened his eyelids. Indeed he was said to work preferably in underground darkness, with a small round lamp attached to his forehead, like a new Cyclops. It was Michelangelo.

'Give us your opinion,' urged the disputants of Leonardo.

'I have heard,' replied the painter, 'that Messer Buonarroti is a student of the great Alighieri. Ask him; he will answer your question better than I.'

For Leonardo had always hoped that his difference with Michelangelo would die a natural death; and he was anxious for an occasion which would bring them to speech together.

The younger man, hearing his name pronounced, stopped and raised his eyes. He was reserved and shy, even to wildness, dreading the stare of strangers, and fancying that they scorned his ugliness, which he himself was never able to forget. Now he looked suspiciously at the company in the loggia; but when he saw Leonardo's smile, and his piercing glance bent down upon him, for the older man was much the taller of the two, shyness changed into rage. He grew pale and red by turns; words choked him; but at last he blurted out:—

'Explain it yourself, most intelligent of sages, sold to the Lombards! Books are your proper pastime; you who spent sixteen years trying to hatch a clay horse, and when you tried to cast it in bronze threw up the task in despair.' He knew he was speaking outrageously; but such was his fury that no words seemed to him sufficiently insulting to hurl at his rival.

Leonardo made no reply; he looked the other full in the face, and the bystanders also were silent, watching the two men.

Before the violence of Buonarroti, Leonardo's calm almost feminine smile, tinged with sadness, suggested weakness. But he himself remembered Monna Lisa's words, that Michelangelo would never pardon him for his gift of that quietness which is mightier than storm.

Michelangelo finding no more words waved his hand, turned quickly, and went on his way, with his shambling gait,his dull unconscious habit of growling, his bent head and bowed shoulders, upon which seemed to rest some superhuman burden. Soon he disappeared as if dissolved into the turbid copper-coloured rain and the wild and threatening sunlight.

Leonardo walked on. On the bridge one of the company in the loggia of the Palazzo Spini overtook him—a little man with the aspect of a Jew, though a pure-blooded Florentine, known to Leonardo as a scandal-monger. The painter crossed the bridge, the other running by his side, talking of Michelangelo, and trying to force Leonardo into some adverse criticism of his rival, which no doubt he intended to repeat at the earliest opportunity. Leonardo, however, refused to be drawn into this trap, and remained silent.

The intruder was not to be shaken off.

'Tell me, Messere,' he said, 'have you yet finished your portrait of La Gioconda?'

'I have not,' answered the painter. 'Why are you interested?'

'Nay, I was only considering the matter. For three years you have laboured at one picture, and you say it is still incomplete. But to us ignorant amateurs it seems already perfection, and we can conceive of nothing further to be done.'

And he smiled obsequiously. Leonardo would have liked to take the little man by the collar and fling him into the river.

'And what will you do now?' continued the irrepressible one. 'But perhaps you have not heard, Messer Leonardo?'

Through his aversion the artist felt a spasm of dread. The other had evidently something on his tongue; his eyes danced, his hands shook. He seemed like some noxious insect.

'Oh,Santo Iddio benedetto!' he exclaimed; 'forsooth you only returned to Florence this morning, so the news may not have reached you. Poor Messer Giocondo! to be thrice widowed! Conceive what bad luck! 'Tis now a month since Madonna Lisa, by the will of Heaven, expired!'

Darkness fell upon Leonardo's eyes; for a moment it seemed to him he must swoon. But the keen inquisitive gaze of his tormentor helped him to a superhuman effort of self-control; he turned pale, but his face remained inscrutable. The other, disappointed, presently took his leave. Left alone,Leonardo gradually recovered his composure. His first thought was that the busybody had lied; inventing the evil tidings on purpose to see what effect they would produce on the artist whose name had long been whispered as a lover of La Gioconda's. It was incredible that she could really be dead.

Before nightfall, however, he had learned all. Madonna Lisa, victim, said some, of a contagious malady of the throat, had died at the obscure town of Lagonero, on the return journey from Calabria to Florence.

The attempt to divert the Arno from Pisa ended in disaster. Floods destroyed the works, and turned the blooming lowland into a pestilential swamp, where the workmen died of malaria. The labour, the money, the lives had been expended for naught: the Ferrarese engineers threw the blame upon Soderini, Machiavelli, and Leonardo. They were placed under a ban, and their acquaintances turned from them in the streets. Niccolò fell ill of vexation.

Two years before this, Leonardo's father, Ser Piero da Vinci, notary of the palace of the Podestà, had died at the age of eighty.

In the matter of inheritance Ser Piero had frequently expressed an intention of placing Leonardo on an equal footing with his legitimate sons. They refused to execute his will. Leonardo's affairs were at this time much involved, and he was induced to assent to the proposal of one of the Hebrew usurers, from whom he had borrowed on the security of his expectations, that he should sell him his claim on the paternal inheritance. A lawsuit followed which lasted for six years. Taking advantage of Leonardo's unpopularity, his brothers poured oil on the flames, accusing him of sorcery, atheism, high treason during his service with Cæsar Borgia, and violation of tombs by digging up corpses for dissection; they even insulted the memory of his dead mother, Caterina, and revived the twenty-year-old slander, accusing him of vice.

In addition to all these trials was added the failure of the picture in the Council Chamber. Notwithstanding his experience with regard to theCenacolo, he had used oil paints also for the 'Battle of Anghiari,' though with what hebelieved an improved method. When the work was half finished he attempted to hasten the fixing of the paint in the plaster by means of a great fire in a brazier before the picture. But the heat acted only on the lower part of the surface; the varnish and paint higher up would not dry.

After many fruitless experiments he realised that the second attempt at wall-painting in oil was unsuccessful as the first, and that the 'Battle' would fade away as surely as the 'Last Supper.'

Once more, in Michelangelo's words, he was obliged to throw up his task in despair.

The picture troubled him more than the Pisan canal or the fraternal lawsuit. Soderini had harassed him with demands for mercantile exactness in the carrying out of the order for the fresco, pressed for completion within a given time, threatened him with penalties, finally accused him openly of having misappropriated public money. Yet when Leonardo, having borrowed from his friends, proposed to restore all he had received from the treasury, Messer Piero refused to accept his offer, and meanwhile was not ashamed to write to the Seigneur Charles d'Amboise, governor of Lombardy, who was negotiating for the transfer of the painter from Florence to Milan:—

'The conduct of Leonardo da Vinci has not been honourable: for having received a large sum for the execution of a great work, he abandoned it when he had completed but a very little, and in this matter had acted as a traitor to the republic.'

One winter night Leonardo sat alone in his working room. The wind howled in the chimney, the walls shook, the candle flickered, the stuffed bird, suspended from a wooden bar, swayed as if attempting to fly; above the bookshelf the familiar spider ran in alarm about his web. Drops of rain battered the window like the knocks of one wishing to enter.

After a day spent in working for his livelihood, Leonardo felt exhausted, as by a night of fever. He tried to employ himself by scientific study, by drawing a caricature, by reading; but everything fell from his hands. He had no inclination to sleep, and the whole night was before him.

He looked at the piles of books, at the crucibles, the retorts, the bottles containing monstrosities preserved in spirit; at the brass quadrants, the globes, the apparatus for the studyof mechanics, astronomy, physics, hydraulics, optics, and anatomy. An unwonted repugnance to them all filled his soul. Was not he the fellow of yonder old spider in the dark corner above the mouldy books, the human bones, the limbs of lifeless machines? What was left to him, what lay between him and death, between him and utter oblivion except certain sheets of paper, which he was covering with writing that no one could read? And he remembered his happiness when as a child he had climbed the heights of Monte Albano, had seen the flocks of cranes, had smelt the freshness of spring, had gazed at the fair city of Florence, lying in the sunlight haze like an amethyst, so small that it could be framed between two branches of juniper. Yes, he had been happy; thinking of nothing, knowing nothing.

Was the whole labour of his life a mockery? Was Love, after all,notthe daughter of Knowledge?

He listened to the howling, the shrieking, the roaring of the storm, and he remembered Machiavelli's words: 'The most fearful thing in life is not poverty nor care, sickness nor sorrow, nor death itself. It is weariness of spirit.'

And still the inhuman voice of the night wind spoke of things unavoidable yet unintelligible to the mind of man; of the loneliness, the blackness of utter darkness on the bosom of old Chaos, mother of all that is; of the boundless weariness of the spirit of the world. Leonardo rose, took a candle, went into the next room, uncovered a picture standing on an easel and veiled with a heavy drapery like a shroud. It was the portrait of Monna Lisa Gioconda.

He had not looked at it since their parting. Now it seemed that he saw it for the first time; such vigour of life was in it that he trembled before his own creation. He remembered old-world traditions of magic portraits which, if pierced by a needle, caused the death of the living originals. In this case had he not done the contrary, taken life from the living woman to give it to the dead?

It was all vivid and exact, to the last fold of her dress, to the little stars of the delicate embroidery garnishing the opening round her neck. It seemed as if the white bosom heaved, the blood beat warm in the arteries, the expression of the face changed. Yet was she spectral, far off, alien; more antique, in her deathless youth, than the cliffs in the picture background—strange, sky-blue rocks, like stalactites,that seemed visions of a world long extinct Ah! and the waves of her hair fell from under the dark transparent veil, by the same laws of divine mechanics as fell the waves of water in the cataract! It was only now, when he had lost her, that he knew the charm of Monna Lisa. Hers was the charm which he had sought in nature; the secret of the universe was the secret of this woman, whom he had loved.

And it was no longer he who was putting her to the test, but she who was trying him. What meant the gaze of those eyes, reflecting his own soul? Was she repeating what she had said at their last meeting—telling him that more than curiosity is needed, if the most wondrous secret of the cavern is to be discovered? Or was this the alien smile of perfect knowledge with which the dead look at the living? For the first time he realised that she was truly dead. Could he or could he not have saved her? Never before had he looked into the face of Death so directly, so near. Terror turned his soul to ice. He drew back from the horror: for the first time in his life he did not wish toknow.

With a hasty and furtive movement he dropped the shroud again over the canvas, and turned away.

In the succeeding spring, by the good offices of Charles d'Amboise, Leonardo was freed from his engagements to the Florentine Republic, and able to return to Milan. Now, as twenty-five years before, he was glad to leave his home, and to see the snowy crests of the Alps rising above the great plain of Lombardy. Now, as then, he was an exile, cast out from his country and his home.

Know all; but be known of none.asil the Gnostic.

Know all; but be known of none.

asil the Gnostic.

In the year 1507 Leonardo definitely entered the service of LouisXII., established himself at Milan, and went no more to Florence, except for small matters of business.

Four years passed uneventfully.

Towards the close of 1511 Giovanni Boltraffio, who was now a master of repute, was working at a wall-painting in the new Church of San Maurizio. It belonged to the ancient foundation of the Monastero Maggiore, and was built on the ruins of the Roman circus. Beside it, enclosed by a high fence and abutting on the Via Della Vigna, was a neglected garden, and the once splendid but now deserted and ruined palace of the Counts of Carmagnola. The nuns of the Monastero Maggiore had let this house and garden to Messer Galeotto Sacrobosco, the old alchemist, who had lately returned to Milan with Cassandra his niece. Their cottage by the Porta Vercellina having been destroyed at the time of the first French invasion, the pair had wandered for nine years in Greece, the islands of the Archipelago, Asia Minor, and Syria. Strange tales were told of them: Galeotto had found the philosopher's stone; he had appropriated vast sums lent him by the Devâtdâr of Syria for experiments, and had fled for his life. Monna Cassandra, by the help of the devil, had found treasure on the site of an ancient Phœnician temple; she had bewitched, drugged, and plundered a wealthy merchant at Constantinople; at any rate the pair had left Milan beggars, and had returned rich—that much was certain.Pupil of Demetrius Chalcondylas, and also of Sidonia the witch, Cassandra appeared now a devout daughter of the Church. She observed all fasts and ceremonies, she attended the holy offices, and by her charities had acquired the favour not only of the sisters of the Monastero Maggiore, but that of the archbishop himself. Evil tongues, however, declared that her religion was a pretence, that she was still a pagan, that she and her uncle had only escaped the Inquisition by flight from Rome, and that sooner or later she was certain to be burned at the stake. Messer Galeotto still reverenced Leonardo, and considered him his master in the occult wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus. The alchemist had collected many rare books in the course of his travels; for the most part those of Alexandrian scholars of Ptolemaic times. Leonardo borrowed these sometimes, and generally sent Giovanni to fetch them, since he was working close to the alchemist's house. As had happened before, Giovanni fell under the spell of Cassandra, and his visits became more frequent. At first she spoke to him guardedly, acting up to her part of repentant sinner, and expressing a desire to take the veil. Little by little she dismissed her fears, and became confidential. They recalled their meetings of ten years ago, when they had both been little more than children—the lonely terrace above the quiet Cantarana, the walls of the Convent of St. Radegonda; especially that sultry evening when she had spoken to him of the Resurrection of the Gods, and had invited him to the Witches' Sabbath. Now she lived as a recluse; was ill, or pretended to be so; and when she was not at church she hid herself in a remote secluded dark chamber, where the windows looked out on the neglected garden, densely shadowed by cypress trees. The room was furnished like a library or a museum. Here were the antiquities she had brought from the East; fragments of statues, dog-headed gods of black syenite from Egypt, mysterious stones upon which was incised the magic wordAbraxas, signifying the three hundred and sixty-five celestial spheres of the Gnostics; precious Byzantine parchments, which time had rendered hard as ivory; fragments from Greek manuscripts, hopelessly lost; earthen shards, with cuneiform Assyrian inscriptions; books of the Persian magi, clasped with iron; Memphian papyri, transparent and thin as the petals of a flower.

Cassandra told Giovanni of the wonders she had seen; of the desolate grandeur of marble temples standing on sea-worn cliffs, at their feet the blue Ionian waves, their columns bedewed with the brine, like the naked body of the foam-born goddess long ago. She told of her incredible exertions, dangers, accidents. He asked her what she had sought, why she had collected these things at the cost of so much toil, and she answered in the words of Luigi her father:—

'To bring the dead to life.'

And her eyes glowed with the fire that had belonged to Cassandra, the witch of days gone by.

In appearance she was little changed; she had the same face, untouched by grief or joy—impassive as the faces of the ancient statues; the same broad low forehead, straight fine eyebrows, firm unsmiling lips, and amber eyes. Yet now her face, refined by illness, or perhaps by the over-insistence of a single thought, had taken an expression calmer and more austere than it had worn in her girlhood. Her dark hair, twined and wreathed like Medusa's snakes, still gave the impression of having a life of its own, still formed a frame for her pale face, and enhanced the brilliance of her eyes, the scarlet of her lips. The charm of the girl attracted Giovanni irresistibly as of old, and renewed in his soul the old feelings of curiosity, compassion, and fear.

In her journey across the land of Hellas she had visited her mother's native place, the lonely little town of Mistra, near the ruins of Sparta, among the bare hills where, half a century before, had died Gemistus Pletho, last teacher of the Hellenic philosophy. Telling Giovanni of her visit to his grave, she repeated Pletho's prophecy that after a few years the world would return to a single faith, not differing from the ancient paganism.

'The prophecy is not fulfilled,' said Giovanni, 'though more than fifty years have passed. Have you still faith in him, Monna Cassandra?'

'There was not perfect truth in Pletho,' she replied calmly, 'for there was much he did not know.'

'What?' asked Giovanni; and under the intentness of her glance he felt his heart sink.

She took a parchment from the shelf, and read to him certain lines from thePrometheus, in which the Titan, having enumerated his gifts to men, more especially thatfire which he had stolen from heaven, and which would make them equal with the gods, goes on to prophesy the fall of Zeus.

'Giovanni, have you never heard of the man who, ten centuries ago, dreamed, like Pletho, of reviving the dead gods—the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julian?'

'Julian the Apostate?'

'Ay, so they called him.'

'He gave his life in vain for the Olympians.' She hesitated, then continued in a lower voice: 'If I were to tell you all, Giovanni! But for to-day I will say only this. Among the Olympians is a god nearer than all others to his brethren below; a god both bright and dark; fair as the dawn, yet pitiless as death; who came to earth and gave to mortals—as Prometheus had done—the forgetting of death and the boon of fire—new fire—in his own blood, in the intoxicating juice of the vine; and, my brother, who is there among men who will understand? who will go boldly forth and say to the world, "The love of him who is crowned with the vine is like the love of Him who is crowned with thorns (who said, 'I am the true vine'); of Him who, no less than Dionysus, makes the world drunk with his blood?" Have you understood, Giovanni, of whom I speak? If not, ask me nothing, for here is a secret which we may not, as yet, reveal.'

Of late a great audacity of thought had come to Giovanni. He feared nothing, because he had nothing to lose. He had convinced himself that neither in the faith of Fra Benedetto, nor in the knowledge of Leonardo, would he find peace. Cassandra's prophecies gave him a glimpse of a new idea, so startling as to be terrible. Instead of turning away he approached it with the courage of despair. Day by day their souls came closer to each other.

Once he asked her why she hid what she believed to be the truth, why she even dissembled?

'All things are not for all men,' she answered. 'Martyrdoms, wonders, and signs are necessary for the crowd. Only those whose faith is imperfect die for their faith, that they may convince others, and themselves. But perfect faith is the same thing as perfect knowledge. Did the truths of geometry discovered by Pythagoras require that he should die in proof of them? Perfect faith is silent; and its secret isabove profession, for the master said, "Ye know all, but be ye known of none."'

'What master?' asked Giovanni, thinking of Leonardo.

'Basil, the Egyptian Gnostic,' she replied; and explained that the great teachers of the early Christian ages, to whom faith and knowledge had been one, had called themselves Gnostics, or Knowers; and she went on to repeat to him many of their sayings, often strange and monstrous, like the visions of the delirious.

He was especially impressed by a legend as to the creation of the world and of man, put forth by the Alexandrine Ophites, or snake worshippers.

'"Above all the heavens is boundless Darkness, immovable, fairer than any light; the Unknown Father, the Abyss, the Silence. His only-begotten daughter, the Wisdom of God, separating from the Father, knew life, and sorrow, and darkened her splendour. The son of her travail was Jaldavaoth, the creating God. Falling away from his mother he plunged yet more deeply into existence, and created the world of the body, a distorted image of the spiritual world. In it was Man, formed to reflect the greatness of his creator, and to bear witness to his power. The elemental spirits, the ministers of Jaldavaoth, brought the senseless mass of flesh to Jaldavaoth to be endowed with life; but the Wisdom of God inspired it also with a breath of the divine wisdom, received by her from the Unknown Father. And then this mean creature, formed of earth and dust, became greater than Jaldavaoth its creator, and grew into the shape and the likeness not of him but of the true God, the Unknown Father. Four-footed Man raised his face from the earth, and Jaldavaoth, at the sight of the being which had slipped from his power, was filled with anger and alarm. He formed another creature, the Angel of Darkness, the serpent-like Satan, the wisdom accursed. And by the help of the serpent Jaldavaoth formed the three kingdoms of Nature; and set Man therein, and gave him a law. "Do this; do not that: if thou breakest the law, thou shalt die." For he hoped by the yoke of the law, and by the fear of death to recover his power over man. But the Wisdom of God still protected Man, and sent him a comforter, the Spirit of Knowledge—snake-like also, but winged like the morning star, the Angel of the Dawn, him to whom allusion is made in the saying, "Be ye wise as the serpent." And the Spirit ofKnowledge went down to men and said, "Taste and know, and your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods."'

'Hearken, Giovanni,' concluded Cassandra; 'the men of the crowd, the children of this world, are the slaves of Jaldavaoth and of the serpent Satan, living under the fear of death, bound by the yoke of the law. But the children of light, those whoknow, the chosen of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, transcend all laws, overstep all bounds, are free as gods, are furnished with wings, remain pure in the midst of evil, even as gold glitters in the mire. And the Spirit of Knowledge, the Angel of the Dawn, leads them through life and death, through evil and through good, through all the curses and the terrors of the world of Jaldavaoth, to the great mother, Sophia, the Wisdom of God; and she bringeth them to the bosom of the great Darkness, which reigns above the heavens, which is immovable and fairer than any light; to the bosom of the Father of all things.'

And hearing this legend of the Ophites, Giovanni could not help inwardly comparing Jaldavaoth to the son of Kronos; the breath of Divine Wisdom to the fire of Prometheus; the Beneficent Serpent the Angel of the Dawn, Lucifer, Son of the Morning, to Prometheus the Titan. In all ages and nations, in the tragedies of Æschylus, in the legend of the Gnostics, in the history of Julian the Apostate, in the teaching of Pletho the philosopher, Giovanni found the echoes of the great discord, the same great struggle, which darkened his own spirit. Ten centuries ago men were suffering as he suffered now, were contending with the same double thoughts, were the victims of the same contradictions, the same temptations. The knowledge that this was so solaced him, yet it deepened his anguish. Sometimes he felt overwhelmed by all these thoughts as by drunkenness or delirium. And then it seemed to him that Cassandra only pretended to be strong and inspired and initiated into the mystery of truth, while in reality she was no less ignorant, no less astray than he was himself; and that the two of them were as helpless and lost as they had been twelve years before; and this new sabbath of half divine, half satanic lore was even more senseless than the Witches' Sabbath to which she had once invited him, and which she now despised as childishness. Giovanni became alarmed and wished to flee, but it was too late; curiosity drew him like a spell, and he felt he would not leave her till he knewall to the end; till he had found salvation and had perished with her.

Now about this time there came to Milan a famous inquisitor and doctor of theology, Fra Giorgio de Casale.

The Pope, JuliusII., alarmed by the spread of sorcery in Lombardy, had sent him with bulls and powers of committal and of extraordinary punishments. Monna Cassandra stood in grave peril; and was warned both by the nuns of the Monastero Maggiore and by the archbishop. She and Messer Galeotto had already fled from Rome to escape this same Fra Giorgio; they knew that once fallen into his hands they would find no escape, and determined to take refuge in France, perhaps in England or even Scotland.

Two days before their setting forth, Giovanni was with Cassandra in her lonely room of the Palazzo Carmagnole. The sunshine, veiled by the thick cypress branches, was scarce brighter than moonlight; the girl seemed even fairer and calmer than was her wont. Now that parting was at hand, Giovanni realised how dear she was to him.

'Shall I not see you yet once more?' he asked her. 'Will you not reveal to me that mystery of which you have spoken?'

Cassandra looked fixedly at him; then drew from a casket a flat four-cornered stone of transparent green. It was the famous 'Tabula Smaragdina,' the emerald tablet said to have been found in a cave near Memphis in the hands of the mummy of a certain priest, who was an incarnation of Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian Horus, the god of boundaries, the guide of the dead to the underworld. It was engraved both in Coptic and in Greek with these verses.

Ουρανο ανω ουρανο κατωΑστερα ανω αστερα κατωΠαν ανω παν τουτο κατωΤαυτα λαβε και ευτυχε.(Heaven above, heaven below;Stars above, stars below;All that is over, under shall show.Happy thou who the riddle readest.)

Ουρανο ανω ουρανο κατωΑστερα ανω αστερα κατωΠαν ανω παν τουτο κατωΤαυτα λαβε και ευτυχε.

Ουρανο ανω ουρανο κατω

Αστερα ανω αστερα κατω

Παν ανω παν τουτο κατω

Ταυτα λαβε και ευτυχε.

(Heaven above, heaven below;Stars above, stars below;All that is over, under shall show.Happy thou who the riddle readest.)

(Heaven above, heaven below;

Stars above, stars below;

All that is over, under shall show.

Happy thou who the riddle readest.)

'Come to me this night,' she said gravely and softly, 'and I will tell you all that I know myself—do you hear?—all, to the very end. And now before we part, let us drink together the cup of friendship.'

She fetched a small pottery vessel, sealed with wax as in the far East, poured out wine, thick as oil, golden-ruddy, and with a strange perfume, into an ancient goblet of chrysolite, with a relief of Dionysus and the Bacchantes. Going to the window she raised the cup as if about to pour a libation; the rosy wine, like warm blood, gave life to the figures of the naked Mænads on the transparent cup.

'There was a time, Giovanni,' she said, 'when I fancied that your Master Leonardo possessed the great secret, for his face is as that of an Olympian god, blended with a Titan. But now I see he aims, but he does not attain; seeks and finds not; knows, but understands not.He is the precursor of him who shall come after him, who is greater than he.Let us drink together, O my brother, this farewell goblet to the Unknown whom we both invoke; to the supreme Reconciler.'

Devoutly, as if performing a religious rite, she drank half the cup and handed it to Giovanni.

'Fear not!' she said, 'this is no poisoned philtre; this wine is from grapes of Nazareth; 'tis the purest blood ofDionysus, the Galilæan!'

When he had drunk, she laid her hands on his shoulders, and whispered rapidly and solemnly—

'If you would know all, Come! Come, and I will tell you the secret, which never yet have I uttered to any one. I will reveal the extreme joy, the extreme sorrow which shall unite us for ever, as brother and sister, as bridegroom and bride.'

In the sun's rays, veiled by the thick cypresses, and pale as moonlight, just as once before by the Cantarana water in the whiteness of the summer lightning, she put her face close to his, her face white as marble, framed by its Medusa locks, with its scarlet lips, its amber eyes.

The chill of a familiar terror froze Giovanni's heart, and he said to himself:—

'La Diavolessa bianca!'

That night at the appointed hour Giovanni stood at the door of the Palazzo Carmagnole. He knocked long, but none opened to him. At last he went to the Monastero Maggiore, and there he learned the terrible news. Fra Giorgio da Casale had appeared suddenly, and had given orders at once to apprehend Galeotto Sacrobosco and his niece Cassandra on a charge of black magic.

Messer Galeotto had succeeded in escaping, but Cassandra was already in the clutch of the Holy Inquisition.

Next day Boltraffio did not leave his bed. He was indisposed, and his head ached; he was half unconscious, and cared for nothing.

At nightfall there was an unwonted pealing of bells, and through his room spread a faint but repulsive odour. His headache increased, he felt sick, and he went out into the air. The day was warm and damp, a day ofscirocco, frequent at Milan in the early autumn. There was no rain, but the roofs and the trees dripped, and the brick pavement was shining and slippery. Yet in the open air Giovanni found the noisome odour still stronger than in his room.

The streets were thronged, the people all coming from the Piazza del Broletto; as Giovanni looked in their faces he fancied them in the same state of semi-unconsciousness as himself. Presently chance words from a passer-by explained to him the noisome odour which pursued him; it was the appalling stench of burned human bodies. They were burning witches, sorceresses. Perhaps—O God!—burning Cassandra!

He began to run, not knowing whither, jostling people, staggering like a drunken man, trembling with ague, feeling the foul savour in the greasy and yellow mist, feeling it follow him, catch him by the throat, stifle his lungs, bind his temples with a dull and gnawing pain.

He never remembered how he made his way to the Monastery of San Francisco and to Fra Benedetto's cell. It was empty, for Benedetto was at Bergamo. Giovanni shut the door, lit a candle, and sank exhausted on the pallet-bed.

In this familiar and peaceful retreat all breathed of holiness and peace. The stench had dissipated, he smelt only incense, fast-day olives, old books, and the varnish for Benedetto's simple paintings. On the wall hung a crucifix and an ancient gift of Giovanni's, a withered garland of flowers gathered on the heights of Fiesole in those days when he sat at the feet of Savonarola.

He raised his eyes to the Crucified. The Saviour still extended his nailed hand as if calling the world to hisembrace: 'Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden.' Was not that the one, the perfect truth?

But the prayer died on his lips. Not though eternal damnation threatened him could he cease to know what he did know, could he drive out or reconcile the two truths which were contending in him. In his old calm despair he turned away from the Crucified, and at the same moment he fancied that the noisome mist, the terrible stench of the burning had reached him even here in this last refuge.

And there rose before him a vision which he had seen often of late, so distinct he scarce knew if it were reality or dream; the vision of Cassandra in the glow of the scarlet flame, among the instruments of torture and stains of blood; she white, virginal, firm as the marble of a statue, preserved by the power of the Beneficent Serpent, the Reconciler, the Deliverer, insensible to the iron and the flame and the gaze of her tormentors.

Coming to himself, he knew by the dying candle, by the strokes of the convent clock, that hours had passed in oblivion, and that it was now past midnight. It was very still, and the air was hot. Through the window were seen pale blue flashes of lightning, as on that memorable night long ago by the Cantarana. The dull roar of distant thunder seemed to come from below the earth. His head ached, his mouth was parched, thirst tortured him; he remembered having seen a pitcher of water in the corner. He rose, dragging himself along by the wall, found it, drank, and was returning to his couch when he became conscious that some one was with him in the cell. Seated on the couch was a figure in the long dark habit of a monk, a hood covering the face. He was astonished, for the door was locked, yet he felt relieved rather than alarmed. His head ceased to ache, his senses were quickened. He approached the seated figure. It rose, and the cowl fell back; Giovanni saw the face, marble white, passionless, the lips red as blood, the amber eyes, the halo of black hair like Medusa's snakes.

Solemnly, slowly, as if for an incantation, Cassandra rose, her arms extended. The black robe fell back. He saw the glowing warmth and beauty of her neck. Was she alive? My God! was she alive?

For the last time Giovanni murmured, 'The white sorceress!' It seemed as if the veil of life were rent beforehim. He was face to face with the mystery of the supreme union. She knelt before him.... She folded him in her arms.... Ah! the inexpressible sweetness! the inexpressible fear!... Delirium! delirium!

Zoroastro da Peretola had not died, neither had he recovered from his fall. He was a cripple, and able to mutter only fragmentary words intelligible to none but the Master. Sometimes he roamed about the house, clattering on his crutches; sometimes he listened to conversation as if trying to understand it; or he would sit in a corner winding strips of linen, or planing wooden staves, whittling sticks or carving tops, for his workman's hands had not lost their need of movement, nor entirely their skill. But often he would rock himself for hours together, a smile on his face, and his arms waving as if they were wings, while he crooned an unending ditty:—

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