Many such ideas Leonardo had inscribed in his note-books; and Fra Luca urged him to order his manuscripts and give them to the public. He even offered to find him an editor. Leonardo, however, refused, and remained firm in his resolution that he would publish nothing. Yet all his writings were couched in the form of address to a reader; and at the commencement of one of his diaries he apologised in these words for the disconnected style and frequent repetitions:—
'Blame me not, O reader, for the subjects are numberless and my memory is weak, and I write at long intervals in different years.'
In the last days of March disquieting tidings reached the Villa Melzi. The French army, led by Monsieur de la Trémouille, had crossed the Alps and was descending for the reconquest of Milan. Il Moro, suspicious of all, and oppressed by superstitious fears, dared not meet the enemy in the open field, and daily showed himselfpiù pauroso d'una donniccuola, 'more panic-stricken than a silly girl.'
But at the villa news of the great world seemed but a faint and far off hum. Careless of duke and king, Leonardo roamed the neighbouring hills and glens and woods, accompanied only by the little Francesco. Sometimes they ascended the river to its source among the pine-clad mountains; and there they hired workmen and made excavations, seeking fossil shells and plants.
One evening, wearied by a long day's march, they rested under an old lime-tree, overhanging the steep bank of the Adda. The unbounded plain, with its long rows of wayside poplars, lay stretched at their feet. The white houses of Bergamo shone in the evening sunlight: the snowy mountain-tops seemed to float in the air. All the sky was clear, save that in the far distance, almost on the horizon, between Treviglio, Brignano, and Castel Rozzone, there suddenly appeared a light cloud of smoke.
'What is it?' asked Francesco.
'I know not. It may be a battle. I see what may be fire, and think I hear the sound of cannon. It may be a skirmish between our folk and the French.'
Latterly, such chance encounters had not been infrequent. They watched the cloud silently for a few minutes, then turned their attention to the fruit of their day's digging. The master picked up a large bone, sharp as a needle, the fin of some primeval fish.
'How many kings, how many nations has not time destroyed since this creature fell on its sleep in that great cavern, where to-day we have found it? How many thousands of years has the world seen, what changes have taken place, while it was lying hid, concealed from all eyes, supporting heavy masses of earth with its bare skeleton?'
He made a large gesture with his hand, as if to embrace the verdant plain stretched at their feet; then continued:—
'All that you see, Francesco, was once the bed of an ocean which covered the chief parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia; the summits of the Apennines were islands in a great sea, and fishes swam in these fields of singing birds.'
He interrupted himself, and they looked once more at the distant smoke-drift, and the flashes of fire from the cannon, so insignificant in the boundless expanse, which lay all peaceful and rose-tinted in the sunset glow. It was hard to believe that a fight was taking place, and that men were killing each other almost within range of their eyesight. More vivid to Francesco were the birds flying to roost, the fish of that forgotten sea. Neither spoke, but at that moment the painter and the child had the same thought:—
''Tis a small matter whether the Lombards prevail or the Frenchmen; Ludovico the duke, or Louis the foreign king; our own people or the strangers. Country, glory, war, the strife of policy, the fall of thrones, the upheaval of nations, all that to man seems great or terrible—all are no more than yonder little cloud of smoke, melting into the peaceful twilight, dissolving in the immutable serenity of Nature.'
It was at Vaprio that Leonardo finished a picture begun long ago at Florence. In a cavern, surrounded by great rocks, the Mother of God was folding one arm round the infant John the Baptist, with the other clasping her Son, as if she desired to unite the Human and the Divine in the indissoluble embrace of a single love. John, devoutly joining his little hands, bent his knee before Jesus, who blessed him with two fingers raised. The attitude of the infant Saviour, sitting naked on the naked earth, one plump dimpled leg tucked under the other, while he leaned on a plump hand, all its fingers outspread upon the sand—suggested the baby still unable to walk; yet already on his face, perfect wisdom was blent with the simplicity of infancy. A kneeling angel supporting the little Jesus, and pointing at the Precursor, turned to the spectator a face instinct with mournful foreboding, yet illumined by a strange and tender smile. Behind the rocks a pale sun shone through drizzling rain, and blue mountains rose into the sky, their sharp peaks weirdand unearthly; the rocks, smoothed and polished as if by the action of salt water, suggested some dried-up ocean bed; and in the cavern was most profound shadow, almost concealing a bubbling spring, leaves of water-plants, pale dim cups of purple iris-flowers. One could fancy slow tricklings and droppings from the overhanging arch of black dolomite; and the creeping weeds and grasses were heavy with the continuous ooze of the ground and the damp saturation of the air. The face of the Madonna alone shone with the delicate brilliance of alabaster within which glows a light. Queen of Heaven, she was shown to men in the gloom of twilight, in a subterranean cavern, in the most secret of the recesses of nature, perhaps the last refuge of ancient Pan and the wood nymphs—she, the mystery of mysteries, the mother of the God-man, in the very bosom of mother earth.
It was the creation at once of a great artist and of a great student; the play of light and of shadow, the laws of vegetable life, the anatomy of the human body, the science of drapery, the spirals of a woman's curls (which he had compared to the circling of a whirlpool), all that the natural philosopher had searched into with 'unrelenting severity,' had measured with mathematical accuracy, had dissected as one dissects a corpse—all this the artist had recombined into a new creation, living beauty, a silent melody; into a mystic hymn to the Holy Virgin, the Mother of God. With knowledge equalled by love he had depicted the veins in the iris petals, the dimples in the baby's elbow, the ancient cleft in the dolomite rock, the quiver of the water in the secret spring; the quiver of infinite grief in the angel's smile. He knew all and loved all. Great love is the daughter of great knowledge.
One day the alchemist, Messer Galeotto Sacrobosco, undertook to experiment with the 'Rod of Mercury,' under which name were known all those staves of myrtle, almond, tamarind, or other 'astrological' woods, which were supposed to have a kinship with metals, and the property of discovering veins of gold, silver, and copper in the rocks. Accompanied by Messer Gerolamo, he went to the east side of the lake of Lecco, known to be rich in ores; and Leonardo joined thecompany, though he had no faith in the 'Rod of Mercury,' and mocked at it no less than at the other delusions of the alchemists.
Near the village of Mandello, at the foot of Monte Campione, there was an abandoned iron mine. Some years before the ground had fallen in and buried a number of the miners; and it was reported that sulphurous exhalations rose from a rent in the lowest depths of the mine, into which, if a stone were thrown, it fell, and fell, and fell, but was never heard to strike the bottom, for the sufficient reason that the pit was bottomless. Leonardo's curiosity was excited by these tales, and he determined to explore the mine while his companions were busied with the magic rod. Not without difficulty, for the peasants believed the mine to be the dwelling-place of a devil, he obtained the services of an old man as guide. A subterranean passage, very steep and dark, and with broken and slippery stairs, led to the central shaft. The guide walked stolidly in front with a lantern, and Leonardo followed, carrying Francesco, who had insisted on accompanying his friend. They descended more than two hundred steps, and were still going down, the passage becoming ever narrower and more steep. A stifling smell of subterranean damp assailed the nostrils. Leonardo struck the wall with a spade, listened to the sound it made, and examined the piece of rock he had detached, the nature and layers of the soil, and the bright mica sparkling in the veins of granite.
He felt the child clinging to him very tightly, and he asked with a smile whether his little comrade were afraid.
'With you, I am never afraid,' said Francesco; presently he added shyly, 'is it true what mybabbosays, that you are going to leave us?'
'Yes, Francesco.'
'Where are you going?'
'To Romagna; to the Duke Valentino.'
'Is it very far?'
'Several days' journey.'
'Several days!' sighed Francesco; 'then shall we never see you again?'
'Why not? The first minute I can, I will come and see you.'
The boy became thoughtful. Squeezing Leonardo's neck tightly with his two arms, he cried:—
'Take me with you! Oh, Messer Leonardo, take me with you.'
'Alack, my child! How is it possible? There is war there.'
'I don't care for the war. Have I not said that with you I am never afraid? Even if it be more fearsome than it is in this place where we are now, I shall not be afraid. I will be your servant, brush your clothes, carry hay to your horses; and I will seek shells for you, and make you drawings of leaves. Did you not say to me I drew them well? I will do everything like a man. I will obey you in whatever you command. Take me with you, Messer Leonardo!'
'And how about Messer Gerolamo? Would he consent?'
'He will consent if I cry for it. And if he doesn't consent, then I will run away. Say you will take me with you! Say it!'
'No, Francesco; it is idle talk. I know thou would'st not leave thy father. He grows old, and thou must have a fondness for him.'
'Of a surety I have a fondness for him. But for you, too, Messer Leonardo! You think me very little, but truly I comprehend everything. Aunt Bona says you are a sorcerer, and Don Lorenzo, my schoolmaster, says it likewise, and that you are wicked, and that with you I shall lose my soul. But when he speaks ill of you, I answer him in such wise that he comes near beating me.'
Suddenly Francesco's eyes filled and the corners of his lips drooped.
'I understand,' he said; 'I understand why you don't want me. You don't love me. And I——.' He burst into tears.
'Hush! hush! Thou should'st cry shame to weep! Hearken to what I tell thee. In a few years, when thou art grown, then I will take thee for my disciple, and keep thee always at my side.'
The child raised his eyes, tears still trembling on their long lashes.
'But do you mean it? or is it said to comfort me, and afterwards will you forget?'
'No, Francesco, I promise.'
'You promise? And how long must I wait?'
'Eight or nine years; till thou art at the least fifteen.'
'Eight years,' sighed the child, reckoning on his fingers 'and I shall be always with you?'
'Unless we die.'
'Eight years! Well, if you say it, it is certain.'
Francesco smiled, and rubbed his cheek against Leonardo's with a pretty gesture peculiar to himself.
'Messer Leonardo, once I dreamed I was in the dark, going down a long, long stair like this one, only it had no beginning and no end. But I was not frightened, for some one was carrying me. I thought it was my mother, who died ere ever I saw her; but now I know it was you. I am as happy with you as if I was with her.'
Leonardo looked at the child with inexpressible tenderness. The innocent eyes shone; he put out his bright lips as confidingly as to a mother, and when Leonardo kissed them he felt the child was giving him his soul. Thus, with the little heart beating against his own, he descended with firm steps into the subterranean night.
Upon their return to Vaprio they found alarm in the villa; the French were approaching. Louis, furious at the revolt of the Milanese, had given their city over to pillage. Many of the inhabitants fled to the mountains. Along the road was an endless procession of carts laden with household stuff, and of weeping women dragging children by the hand. At night, from the top windows of the villa, flames were still seen citywards. At Novara a battle was daily expected which should decide the fate of Lombardy.
At last Fra Luca brought news of the sad event which had ended the war. The battle was ordered on the 10th of April, but when the duke was reviewing his forces, prior to its commencement, the Swiss mercenaries refused to advance, for they had been secretly bought by Trivulzio. In vain Il Moro conjured them with tears not to bring him to ruin, and promised them extravagant reward in recompense for fidelity. They remained obdurate.
Then Ludovico, disguised as a monk, sought to flee; but a Swiss named Schattenhalb betrayed him to the French captains. He was seized and carried before the marshal, who rewarded the Swiss with thirty pieces of silver.
The Sire de la Trémouille had charge of the prisoner to escort him to France. He, who, in the words of the court poet, 'first after God had guided the wheel of Fortune,' was placed in a barred cage and carried in a cart, like a trapped wild beast. The duke asked one favour of his captors, that he might carry a copy of theDivina Commediawith him into his exile, 'per istudiari.'
Life at the Villa Melzi became daily more perilous. The French had sacked Lomellina. The Venetians had destroyed the Martesana. Robbers roamed in the neighbourhood of Vaprio; already Messer Gerolamo Melzi was preparing to carry Francesco and Aunt Bona into refuge at Chiavenna.
Leonardo's last night came; he inscribed in his diary the thoughts of the day:—
'A bird having little tail but broad wings, flaps them with great violence, and turnsso that the wind may blow under themand raise heraloft. This I observed watching a young hawk above the canonry of Vaprio, on the road to Bergamo, to-day, April 14th.'
And in the margin he added incidentally: 'Il Moro has lost his state, his goods, and his liberty; not one of his undertakings will be achieved by himself.'
The overthrow of the great house of Sforza, the ruin of the man he had served for sixteen years, were to him of far less interest than the flight of a bird of prey.
'Piglierà il prima volo il grande ucello sopra del dosso del suo magno Cecero, empiendo l'universo del stupore, empiendo di sua fama tutte le scritture, e gloria eterna al nido dove nacque.'—Leonardo da Vinci.(The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.)
'Piglierà il prima volo il grande ucello sopra del dosso del suo magno Cecero, empiendo l'universo del stupore, empiendo di sua fama tutte le scritture, e gloria eterna al nido dove nacque.'—Leonardo da Vinci.
(The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the world with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest whence he sprang.)
The little town of Vinci, Leonardo's native place, lay on the western slope of Monte Albano, in Tuscany, between Florence and Pisa, and not far from Empoli. There he had an uncle, Ser Francesco da Vinci, who had amassed wealth in the silk industry, and who, unlike the rest of the family, was friendly to his nephew. Before journeying to Romagna the painter proposed to visit Ser Francesco, and if possible to leave Astro in his charge, the unfortunate smith not yet having recovered from the effects of his fall. Leonardo hoped that the mountain air, with quiet and rest, might accomplish more for him than the drugs and experimental surgery of ignorant physicians. The artist, who had been in Florence for a few days, journeyed to Vinci alone, riding a mule. He left the town by the Porta a Prato, and took his way along the banks of the Arno; at Empoli he left the high road and followed a narrow and winding mountain path. The day had been clouded and cool; at evening the sun set in a bank of mist which foreboded a north wind. The prospect on either side continually widened; the hills became higher; and though their undulations were still gentle, they gave promise of higher mountains behind. The ground was carpeted with scanty herbage of a dull green; and the fields, with fallow stripes of brown earth, the stone walls, the greyolives were all dull and whitish in tone, suggestive of the calm, the simplicity, the poverty of the north. Here and there in the distance, beside some solitary chapel or farmhouse with yellow walls and barred windows, dark pointed cypresses, such as may be seen in the pictures by early Florentine masters, rose against quiet hills and an even background of clear, delicately gradated sky.
The path became gradually steeper, the air fresher and more invigorating. Sant' Ausano, Calistri, Lucardi, and the Chapel of San Giovanni were already past. Now the day closed, and one by one the stars came out in the blue sky, from which the clouds had disappeared. The wind freshened; thetramontana, that piercing wind from the Alps, was beginning to blow. Every appearance of the lowlands had vanished; as the plain had passed into hills, so now the hills passed into mountains. Quite suddenly, at a turn of the road, Vinci came in sight, a little, crowded, stone-built town, clustering round the black tower of its ancient castle, clinging to the rock, crowning the peaked summit of a low but sharply precipitous hill. Lights were gleaming in the windows of the houses.
At the cross-roads near the foot of the hill there was a little shrine known to Leonardo from his earliest childhood; a clay image of the Virgin glazed in blue and white, before which a lamp burned continually. As he passed he saw a woman kneeling, bowed together dejectedly, covering her face with her hands, a poor peasant woman, in a thin dark dress, torn and weather-stained.
'Caterina!' murmured Leonardo. It was his mother's name; she too had prayed here, a poor peasant.
After crossing the swift mountain stream, the path turned to the right between garden walls overgrown with weeds. Here it was quite dark, and the traveller did not see the rose-branch which kissed his face as he passed, and scented the air with balm. He dismounted at an ancient wooden door let into the wall, and knocked with a stone on the iron cramp. It was the house which had belonged to Leonardo's grandfather, and from him had passed to Ser Francesco. The painter himself had spent his childhood within its walls. No one answered the knock, nor was there for a long time any sound but the rushing of the mill-stream, and presently the quavering bark of an old watch-dog.
An old man came out, very much bowed and wrinkled, with silvery hair. He carried a lantern, and was very deaf and rather stupid, so that it took him time to understand who Leonardo was.
However, when at last he recognised him whom he had carried in his arms forty years earlier, he burst into tears of joy, dropped his lantern, and, stooping over the painter's hand, mumbled it with his lips, sobbing out:—
'O Signore! Signore! Leonardo mio!'—while the dog wagged his tail to please the old gardener, pretending that he clearly comprehended what was taking place. Gian Battista, the old man, explained that Ser Francesco was away at Marcigliano, where a monk of his acquaintance had promised a drug to cure him of the stomach-ache; he would not be home for two days. Leonardo determined, however, to wait for him; more especially because next day Boltraffio was to bring up Zoroastro from Florence.
The old man ushered the visitor into the house, and bade his grand-daughter, a pretty fair-haired girl of sixteen, to prepare supper. Leonardo declined anything but bread, home-grown wine, and iron-water from the spring on the property. Ser Francesco, though well-to-do, continued the hardy, simple style of living which had been a necessity to his forefathers, and his house was anything but luxurious.
Leonardo entered the familiar apartment, at once kitchen and parlour, where the few clumsy chairs, settles, and chests had become smooth and polished with age; a dresser carried heavy pewter dinner-plates, and medicinal herbs were hanging from the beams of the raftered ceiling. The walls were whitewashed, and quite bare; there was a brick floor, and an immense fireplace begrimed with soot.
All this was as Leonardo remembered it, but there was one innovation; thick dull green glass had been inserted in the window-panes, formerly covered only with oiled cloth, causing twilight in the room on the brightest day. Upstairs, in the sleeping rooms, the windows were protected by wooden shutters, which did not fit close enough to keep out the cold.
The gardener made a fire of fragrant juniper and mountain heather, and lit a hanging earthenware lamp, in shape much like the lamps found in Etruscan tombs. In this remote corner of Tuscany the furniture, the customs, even the language hadpreserved traces of immemorial antiquity. While the young girl was preparing the supper of wine, bread, and a lettuce salad, Leonardo mounted to the upper rooms, where little had been changed since his last visit. He saw the same immense four-poster bed, in which his grandmother had sometimes permitted him to sleep, and which had now passed, with the other heirlooms, to his uncle Francesco. On the wall hung the well-remembered crucifix, the image of the Madonna, the shell for holy water, a bunch of dried grass, callednebbia, and a book of Latin prayers in cursive script, written on paper deeply yellowed by time.
Returning to the parlour, he sat in the chimney-corner, drank from a wooden cup with a pleasant scent of olive-wood, and remaining in the room alone, after Gian and his grand-daughter had gone to bed, abandoned himself to happy recollections.
He thought of his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, the notary of the Florentine Commune, a man of seventy, white-haired, but still vigorous, whom he had seen a few days ago at Florence, in his house in the Via Ghibellina. No one had ever loved life better than Ser Piero, with a love simple and unabashed. He had cherished a great tenderness for his first-born, but his legitimate sons, Antonio and Giuliano, fearing lest their father should alienate part of his patrimony in favour of the bastard, had done all in their power to induce bad blood between them.
Leonardo now felt himself a stranger in his father's house. His youngest half-brother, Antonio, was more especially prejudiced against him on account of his supposed atheism, for Antonio was one of the Piagnoni, a zealous and rigid follower of Savonarola, and also a conventional, virtuous, and money-loving trader of the guild of the woolstaplers. Antonio often addressed his half-brother on the subject of the Christian faith, the need for repentance, the heresies of the philosophical thinkers of the day, and he had given him a book compiled by himself, aManual of the Art of Saving the Soul. Leonardo carried this book in his pocket, and now, seated in his uncle's chimney-corner, he drew it forth.It was a little volume, written in the small laborious hand which befitted a merchant's office.
'The book of confession compiled by me, Antonio di Ser Pietro da Vinci, a Florentine, sent to Nanna, my sister-in-law; most useful to all who desire to confess their sins.'
For Leonardo, his brother's book breathed the air of conventional and bourgeois piety, which had weighed upon his childhood, and had been an inheritance in his family. A century before his birth the founders of the house of Vinci were just as prudent, just as avaricious, just as pious servants of the Florentine Commune as was now Ser Pietro, his father. Their name appeared first in a writing of 1339, where mention was made of one Michele da Vinci, a notary. Leonardo imagined him like Antonio, his well-remembered grandfather. Antonio instructed his sons to aspire to nothing over high, not to fame, nor to honours, nor to public office, civil or military, nor to exceptional wealth, nor to exceptional learning.
'Starsi mezzanamente è cosa più sicura,' ''Tis safest to keep the mean,' was his constant saw; and Leonardo remembered the gravity and calm assurance with which he enunciated this infallible rule.
After thirty years' absence, sitting under the roof of his grandfather's house, listening to the moaning wind and watching the logs burning in the fireplace, Leonardo thought how his own life had been one long breach of this 'ant and spider' policy; had been an exuberant blossoming which, according to his brother Antonio, temperance should have measured with compasses and shorn away with iron shears.
Next morning, before the old gardener was awake, Leonardo left the house, and having traversed the poor little town of Vinci ascended to Anchiano, the neighbouring hamlet. The path was steep, and as on the previous day, the sun colourless and wintry. At the verge of the horizon, the cold cloudless blue of the sky melted into a dull purple. Thetramontanablew steadily from the north, whistling monotonously in the ears. The vegetation was still colourless and poor; little meagre vineyards in semicircles, sparse dull grasses, mingled with fluttering poppies; on all sides dusty grey olives, with knotted, blackened, and twisted trunks of greatantiquity. Entering Anchiano, Leonardo halted, for he did not recognise the place. Where had been the Castello degli Adimari with a wine-shop in its only unruined tower, there was now a vineyard and a new house, with smoothly whitewashed walls. A husbandman digging trenches among the vines, explained that mine host of the tavern having died, the land had been sold to a sheepbreeder from Orbignano, who had cleared away the ruins, and made a vineyard and an olive-grove on their site.
Leonardo had good reason to ask after that little tavern, for it was there he had been born.
Fifty years earlier, the village wine-shop had been lively enough. It stood a little back from the road, its signboard swinging merrily. The inhabitants of the surrounding hamlets on their way to the fairs of San Miniato or Fucecchio, chamois-hunters, mule-drivers, custom-house officers, and other persons who were not too exclusive in their taste for company—all met here. The maid of the tavern was a girl of sixteen, an orphan, acontadinafrom Vinci; her name Caterina.
One day, in the spring-time of 1451, Piero di Ser Antonio da Vinci, a young notary from Florence, was called to Anchiano to draw up an agreement for the lease of the sixth part of a certain oil-press. Business concluded, the peasants invited the notary to drink at the tavern in the old tower of the Adimari. Ser Piero, always affable, even among simple folk, accepted the invitation. The party was served by Caterina, and the young notary, as he afterwards confessed, became enamoured at first sight. Under pretext of quail-shooting, he delayed his return to Florence; he haunted the tavern, and laid siege to Caterina. Ser Piero was already celebrated as a conqueror of women; he was four-and-twenty, handsome, strong, something of a coxcomb. He possessed that self-confident eloquence which in a lover is irresistible. Caterina hesitated, prayed to the Virgin for assistance, finally succumbed. At the time when the quails took their flight from the Val di Nievole, she was with child.
Ser Antonio da Vinci soon learned that his son had entangled himself with the maid-servant at a village hostelry. He despatched him to Florence and wedded him as quickly as possible to Madonna Albiera di Ser Giovanni Amadori, who was neither very young nor very fair, but had a substantialdowry. Caterina he mated also with a peasant named Accattabrighe di Piero del Vacca, who was said to have beaten his first wife to death in a drunken fit. The girl resigned herself without protest, but with inward grief which threw her into a fever when she was brought to bed. She was unable to suckle her child, and the little Leonardo was wet-nursed by a goat from Monte Albano. Piero, however, begged his father to take Caterina's child to be bred in his house. In those times no one was ashamed of bastards, and they were frequently educated on the same footing as their legitimate brethren, and even preferred to them. Leonardo accordingly entered the virtuous and pious family of da Vinci, and was entrusted to the care of his grandmother, Lena di Piero da Baccareto.
As the vision of a dream, Leonardo remembered his mother; more especially her smile, so delicate, so fleeting, full of mystery, and gently malicious; singularly in contrast with the habitual expression of her beautiful but melancholy face, which to some seemed even harshly severe. Once he found that smile again, on the face of a small antique bronze statue of Cybele, the immemorially ancient goddess of the earth; the same subtle smile which he remembered as the characteristic of the young peasant woman of Vinci—his mother.
He thought:—
'Ah, how the mountain women, dressed in poor coarse raiment, excel in beauty those who are adorned!'
It was said by persons who had known Caterina that her son resembled her; his long and slender hands, his golden hair, his smile, were inherited from her. From his father he had a powerful frame, health, zest of life; from his mother that almost feminine charm. Brought up in the paternal house, Leonardo had never been entirely separated from his mother. Her cottage was not far from Ser Antonio's villa; and at mid-day when Accattabrighe had gone forth with the oxen, the boy would make his way through the vineyard, climb the wall, and run to his mother. She was awaiting him on the threshold, distaff in hand; she stretched out her arms, and when he came she covered his eyes, his lips, his hair with her kisses. Or at night when Accattabrighe would be at the tavern, dicing and swilling, the child would escape from his bed, crawl through the window and down the fig-tree, and run to Caterina's home. Sweet to him was the cool of thedewy grass, the cry of the night-jar, the very nettles and stones which wounded his feet; the glow of the far-off stars, and the very anxiety lest his grandam should awake and miss him.
Yet Monna Lena likewise loved and pampered her grandson, and he remembered her well, her one vesture of dark brown, her white kerchief, her dark, wrinkled, kind old face, her lullabies, and the appetising odour of the 'berlingozzi' which she baked after the ancient Tuscan recipe. With his grandfather, he had not agreed so well. At first Ser Antonio had taught him personally; but Leonardo was an unwilling pupil, and at seven he was sent to school at the Oratory of Santa Petronilla. But neither was the Latin grammar to his liking. He played truant, wandering to a wild ravine behind the town where he would lie on his back watching the flight of the cranes with torturing envy; or unfolding the cups of flowers, wondering at their coloured petals and pollen-covered stamens, moist with honey. Sometimes during his grandfather's absence the little Nardo would escape for whole days into the mountains, making his way by the tracks of goats and along the edges of precipices to the summit of Monte Albano. Thence he could see a boundless expanse of meadows, pastures, groves, and forests; the marshes of Fucecchio; and Prato, Pistoia, Florence, and the snowy peaks of the Alps; when the sky was clear, the misty blue of the Mediterranean Sea. At last he would return home, dusty, sunburnt, his hands scratched, his garments torn; but his grandam, seeing his happiness, had not the heart to punish him, or to betray him to Ser Antonio. The boy lived alone; his father and his uncle Francesco he saw but seldom, for they were away in Florence; with his schoolmates he did not associate. Their sports displeased him; on one occasion when they tore the wings from a butterfly and laughed at its writhings, he frowned, turned pale, and went away. Complaints of his surliness were in consequence made to Ser Antonio; great displeasure followed, threats of flogging, and an actual imprisonment for three days in a cupboard under the staircase.
Later, recalling this link in a long chain of injustice, he wrote in his diary:—
'If as a child you were put in prison for doing your duty, what will they do to you as a man?'
Not far from Vinci a large villa was in course of construction by the Florentine architect, Biagio da Ravenna, a pupil of Alberti. Leonardo watched the raising of the walls, the levelling of the stonework, the elevation of huge blocks by machinery. One day Ser Biagio talked with the lad, and was astonished by the understanding which he showed. At first in jest, then seriously, he taught him the first principles of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and mechanics. The teacher marvelled at the facility with which the boy caught each idea as it were on the wing, and made it his own; it seemed as though he were not learning but remembering. The grandfather looked askance at what he called 'caprices,' and he thought it a bad omen that the boy used preferably his left hand when he wrote; for sorcerers, necromancers, and those who make compacts with the devil are, of course, always born left-handed! His suspicion of the lad increased when a neighbour from Fortuniano assured him that the old woman of the village on Monte Albano who had provided the black goat for the suckling of the babe was an undoubted witch.
'Do what you will,' thought the old notary, 'but if you bring up a wolf he will always have his eye on the forest. Well, well! Submit to the will of Heaven! There's no family withoutoneabortion.'
And he waited with desperate anxiety for the birth of a legitimate heir to Piero, his favourite son; since Nardo, the product of illicit love, was showing himself thus clearly 'ill-born' into this eminently respectable family. 'Twas a tale of Monte Albano, which indeed accounted for its name, that many plants and animals there mysteriously changed their natural colour into white; so that the traveller, roaming its woods and meadows, would chance upon white violets, white strawberries, white sparrows, white nestlings in a brood of blackbirds. In like manner the little Nardo was one of the wonders of the White Mountain; a changeling in the virtuous and commonplace family of the Florentine notary; a big white cuckoo in a nest of blackbirds.
When the boy had reached the age of thirteen, his father removed him from Vinci to his house. Florence; since thenhe had rarely visited his birthplace. But long after, in one of his note-books of the year 1494, when he was in the service of the Duke of Milan, he wrote, 'Caterina, came in July last year.' It might signify the beginning of some kitchen wench's service; in reality it referred to his mother. Her husband had died, and feeling that her own time might be short, she desired to see her son at least once again. She joined a party of pilgrims on their way to Milan for adoration of the Holy Nail; journeyed from Tuscany, and presented herself at Leonardo's house. He received her with pious affection; for her he was ever the little Nardo, who had come secretly by night with bare feet and nestled at her side.
She would have returned to Anchiano, but her son would not permit it. He placed her in a quiet and commodiously-fitted cell of the Convent of Santa Chiara, near the Porta Vercellina. Later she fell ill, and at her own request was taken to theOspedale Maggiore, built by Francesco Sforza and the finest hospital in Milan. Here he visited her for months every day, at the last scarcely leaving her for an hour. Yet he had told none of his friends nor even his pupils of her presence in Milan.
But when for the last time he had pressed his lips on the cold hand of this peasant woman who had been his mother, it seemed to him that to her he owed everything. He honoured her with a sumptuous funeral.
Six years later, after the fall of Ludovico Sforza, when he was leaving Milan, he found a small carefully wrapped bundle in one of his chests. It contained a couple of coarse canvas shirts and three pair of goats'-hair stockings, all made by Caterina's hand, and brought to him from Vinci. He had never worn them, but now coming upon the poor things among his scientific books and mechanical apparatus, and the garments of fine linen to which he had habituated himself, he felt inexpressibly touched. Nor in the years which followed, when he was a solitary and weary wanderer from country to country, from town to town, did he ever omit to take this poor little parcel with him, packed among the dearest of his treasures.
Such were Leonardo's recollections as he climbed the slopes of Monte Albano, familiar to him in his childhood.He sat down under the shelter of a rock and surveyed the well-remembered landscape. Dwarfed and gnarled oak-trees surrounded him still hung with withered leaves, perfumed juniper, which the peasants calledscopa(besom), pale shy violets, and low bushes of dried mountain heather, exhaled that intangible freshness which is the odour of spring. Far away the valley of the Arno met the sky; but to the right rose bare lofty mountains with undulating shadows, twisted hollows like gigantic serpents, and wide ravines, delicate purple in colour. At his feet was Anchiano, white and shining in the sunlight; further away, Vinci clung to its little conical hill like a wasp's nest; the castle tower distinct and black as the two cypresses by the side of the Anchiano road.
Nothing was changed since the day when he had first climbed these paths. Forty years before thescopahad grown as luxuriantly, the violets and thyme had scented the air, the oaks had rustled their withered leaves; as now, Monte Albano had seemed colourless, bare, northern. Etruria of the ancients, now Tuscany, land of perpetual spring, land of unfailing renaissance—to Leonardo it wore that subtle and tender smile brightening a beauty otherwise too austere, which he had first seen on the countenance of Caterina his peasant mother.
He rose and pursued his way, the path growing more rugged, the wind colder, sharper, more northerly. Memories of his youth crowded upon his soul.
Ser Piero da Vinci had prospered. Skilful and good-hearted, his life ran upon greased wheels. Live and let live, was his maxim, and he stood well with all, more especially with the clerical party. Procurator of the monastery of the Santissima Annunziata, and of many other rich foundations, he acquired wealth in abundance, adding largely to his property, but never changing the modest fashion of life which he had learned from Ser Antonio. His wife died when he was eight-and-thirty, but he soon married a young and beautiful girl, Madonna Francesca di Ser Giovanni Lanfredini. She, like her predecessor, was childless; and Leonardo, the bastard, lived with his father, and had every prospect of becoming his heir.
At that time Paola dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a famous astronomer and mathematician, lived at Florence. He had written a letter to Christopher Columbus, assuring him on the authority of his calculations that the route to India by the Antipodes was neither so long nor so arduous as had been supposed, encouraging him to make the adventure, and prophesying its success. Columbus therefore carried out what had been conceived in the lonely cell of the Florentine scholar, and was, as it were, the instrument played by the hand of a skilled musician. Toscanelli was said by his contemporaries to 'live like a saint'; reserved, frugal, chaste, he frequented neither the brilliant Medicean court, nor the vain assemblies of the Neo-Platonist imitators of antiquity. His face was curiously ugly, but redeemed by eyes of great brilliance.
One evening a lad, scarcely more than a child, knocked at his door and was coldly received, being suspected of mere idle curiosity. But short conversation with the young Leonardo—for it was he—convinced the astronomer, as before it had convinced Biagio da Ravenna, of his wonderful aptitude for mathematics. Ser Paola became his teacher; on summer nights they went together to Poggio del Pino, one of those fragrant, pine-clad, heather-carpeted hills, girdling the City of Flowers; there Toscanelli had built his observatory. He taught the boy all he himself knew of the laws of the universe. It was from these lessons that Leonardo dated his faith in the experimental study of nature, as yet too much neglected by the philosophers.
Ser Piero da Vinci, though he put no difficulties in the way of his son's studies, advised him to choose some more lucrative occupation; having noticed his bent towards modelling and drawing, he showed some of the boy's work to Andrea Verrocchio, the painter and goldsmith; and shortly afterwards Leonardo was formally entered as one of this artist's pupils.
Verrocchio, the son of a poor furnace-stoker, was seventeen years the senior of Leonardo. His face was placid, flat, and pale, with a double chin. Only in his tight shut lips and piercing eyes was there evidence of singular intelligence. Spectacles on nose, magnifier in hand, he sat in his darkbotteganear the Ponte Vecchio, looking more like a small shopkeeper than a great artist. A disciple of Paolo Uccello, he, like his master, affirmed that Perspective must be based on science. 'Geometry,' he said, 'being a part of mathematics, mother of all knowledge, is also the mother of drawing, which is the father of all the arts.' Complete knowledge and complete enjoyment of beauty were to him identical. Unlike Botticelli, and others of his kidney, Verrocchio was neither ravished by extraordinary beauty nor repelled by unusual deformity. In both he found occasion for study. He was also the first master who made anatomical models. If Botticelli had found the fascination of art in the miraculous, in the fabulous, in that mystic haze which confounds Olympus with Golgotha—for Verrocchio it lay in patient investigation and a firm grasp of the verities of nature. The miraculous was not true for him. Truth was the miracle.
This was the man to whom Ser Piero brought his seventeen-year-old son; he became Leonardo's teacher; further, he became his disciple. The monks of Vallombrosa had commissioned Ser Andrea to paint them a Baptism of Christ, and the master set his pupil to execute the kneeling angel which formed part of the composition. The result showed Verrocchio that his scholar knew intuitively and clearly all that he himself had dimly guessed and sought for gropingly, slowly and laboriously, through a fog.
Later it was said that Verrocchio gave up painting because jealous of the young man's superiority; in reality there was never anything but harmony between the two. Each supplied the deficiency of the other. The pupil had lightness and precision of touch; Verrocchio, perseverance and concentrated attention. They worked together without envy, without rivalry, scarce knowing how much they owed each other.
At that time Verrocchio executed the bronze group for Orsanmichele, which was known as the 'Incredulity of St. Thomas.' It was altogether unlike the celestial dreams of the Beato Angelico or the delirious idealism of Sandro Botticelli. In St. Thomas's mysterious smile, as he put his fingers into the print of the nails, was exhibited for the first time the boldness of man before his God; Reason face to face with Miracle.
Leonardo's first independent work was a cartoon for a curtain of Flanders tissue, a gift from the Florentines to the King of Portugal. The subject was the Fall of Man; and such was the accuracy with which the palm branches, the flowers, and the animals of Paradise were drawn, that Vasari the critic was stupefied at so great patience.
Eve, stretching out her hand to the Tree of Knowledge, wore the same smile of bold curiosity which Verrocchio had given to St. Thomas.
A little later Ser Piero employed his son to paint one of those round wooden shields calledrotelle, which were used as ornaments for houses, and which generally carried some allegorical design. Leonardo painted an animal, terrible as the face of Medusa. He had collected lizards, snakes, crickets, spiders, centipedes, moths, scorpions, bats, every sort of noxious creature, and had studied their characteristics. By a process of selection and exaggeration of their individual truth, he had put together a monster, such as had never existed, yet which might have been possible, deducing what is not from what is with the precision of an Euclid or a Pythagoras. The beast was issuing from its den in the rock; grating its black and shining scales upon the gravel. Fetor exhaled from its gaping jaws, smoke from its nostrils; its eyes were flame. Horrible as was the monster, the wonder of it lay less in its deformity than in its charm, which was no less powerful than the charm of beauty.
Day and night Leonardo had studied and painted in the stifling room empoisoned by the stench from the dead reptiles; at last the picture was finished, and he summoned his father to see it. He had placed it on a wooden stand surrounded by black cloth, the light being so disposed that only the monster was illuminated. Ser Piero came in, saw the beast, and involuntarily drew back. Recovering himself, he looked again, and his expression changed from great fear to great pleasure.
'Therotellais ready,' said Leonardo; 'it produces the effect at which I have aimed. You may take it away.'
Next he received an order for an 'Adoration of the Magi' from the monks of San Donato a Scopeto. In thesketch for this picture he exhibited a knowledge of anatomy and of the outward expression of the emotions, surpassing that of any previous painter. Against a background almost Hellenic in its beauty, he showed the Mother of God with the divine Infant, who, smiling shyly, seemed to marvel at the precious gifts brought by the strangers. They, wearied and bowed down by the load of ancient and earthly wisdom, bending their heads, shading their eyes, were absorbed in contemplation of that miracle of miracles, the Epiphany of God in man.
In his picture of the Fall, Leonardo had realised the boldness of reason—the wisdom of the serpent; in this of the Adoration he had shown the innocence of the dove, the humility of faith. One picture the complement of the other; the two exhibited the full circle of his philosophy.
But the second picture was never finished. In the quest for perfection he made difficulties for himself which his brush could not overcome. In the words of Petrarch, 'al dissetamento era d'ostacolo l'eccessiva brama'—'excessive thirst hindered its own quenching.'
Meanwhile, Ser Piero married his third wife, Margherita, who brought him two sons, Antonio and Giuliano. The step-mother hated Leonardo, and accused her husband of wasting the inheritance of his lawful children upon a bastard, foster-child of a witch's goat. The young painter had enemies also among his fellow-students; and it was one of them who brought against him and against Verrocchio the accusation of which Cesare da Sesto had told Giovanni Boltraffio. The calumny had acquired some verisimilitude from the exceptional friendship between master and scholar, and from the fact that Leonardo, though the handsomest man of young Florence—('in his exterior, says a contemporary, there was such radiance of beauty that at sight of him sad hearts were gladdened')—eschewed the society of women. The accusation came to nothing, but he left Verrocchio, and henceforth painted independently.
Reports now got about touching his heresies and atheism, and it became increasingly difficult for him to remain in Florence. Ser Piero introduced him to Lorenzo de' Medici; uselessly, however, forIl Magnificodisapproved spirits too daring and unconventional, and demanded a constant and servile adulation which Leonardo was ill fitted to supply.The tedium of inaction oppressed him. He entered into negotiations with the Egyptian ambassador for the purpose of obtaining the post of chief architect to the 'diodario' of Syria, though he knew that it would require his embracing the Mahometan faith. His one desire was to escape from Florence. Chance favoured him. He made a many-stringed silver lute in the form of a horse's head, which took Lorenzo de' Medici's fancy. Lorenzo sent it by the hand of the inventor to Milan, as a gift to Ludovico Sforza.
Leonardo was received at the Lombard court not as a man of science, not as a painter, but as thesonatore di lira—the 'player of the lyre.'
But before starting he had written a long letter to the duke, setting forth how useful he might be to him.
'Most Illustrious Lord,—Having studied and estimated the works of the present inventors of warlike engines, I have found that in them there is nothing novel to distinguish them. I therefore force myself to address your Excellency that I may disclose to him the secrets of my art.
'1st. I have a method for bridges, very light and very strong; easy of transport and incombustible.
'2nd. New means of destroying any fortress or castle (which hath not foundations hewn of solid rock) without the employment of bombards.
'3rd. Of making mines and passages, immediately and noiselessly, under ditches and streams.
'4th. I have designed irresistible protected chariots for the carrying of artillery against the enemy.
'5th. I can construct bombards, cannon, mortars, 'passavolanti': all new and very beautiful.
'6th. Likewise battering rams, machines for the casting of projectiles, and other astounding engines.
'7th. For sea-combats I have contrivances both offensive and defensive; ships whose sides would repel stone and iron balls, and explosives, unknown to any soul.
'8th. In days of peace, I should hope to satisfy your Excellency in architecture, in the erection of public and private buildings, in the construction of canals and aqueducts. I am acquainted with the arts of sculpture and painting, and can execute orders in marble, metal, clay, or in painting with oil, as well as any artist. And I can undertake that equestrian statue cast in bronze, which shall eternally glorifythe blessed memory of your lordship's father and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
'And if any of the above seem extravagant or beyond the reach of possibility, I offer myself prepared to make experiment in your park; or in whatsoever place it may please your Excellency to appoint; to whose gracious attention I most humbly recommend myself.
Leonardo da Vinci.'
When he caught his first glimpse of the snow-clad Alps shining above the green plain of Lombardy, he felt himself entering upon a new life, in a strange land which was to become his true country.
Such was the half century of life upon which Leonardo looked back as he ascended Monte Albano. The path had become direct, vegetation was left below, the mountains were bare, solitary, and terrible, as belonging to another planet. He was blinded by fierce gusts of icy wind. Stones breaking away from his feet fell noisily into the ravine. He was still ascending, and at every step the prospect widened. He found exhilaration in the effort of climbing, gradually conquering the great mountains and compelling them to give up their treasures. Florence was out of sight, but the spacious district of Empoli was spread at his feet; first the mountains, cold dull purple with broad shadows; then the unnumbered billowy hills from Livorno to San Geminiano. Everywhere was air, emptiness, space. The narrow footpath seemed to vanish; he fancied himself flying over this boundless expanse on gigantic wings. The realisation that he had no such equipment produced in his mind the wondering alarm felt by a man who is suddenly deprived of his legs. He remembered how in boyhood he used to watch the flight of cranes; and how, hearing their cry, he had fancied it a summons to himself, and had wept for disappointment that he could not obey. He remembered releasing his grandfather's cage-birds, and joying in the wild swoops of their recovered liberty. He remembered listening to the tale of Icarus, who had thought to fly on waxen wings, but had fallen and perished; and how, when bidden by his teacher to name the greatest of ancient heroes, he had answered without a moment's hesitation 'Icarus, son of Dædalus.' He remembered, too, his pleasure in finding a clumsy representationof his hero among the bas-reliefs of Giotto's campanile in Florence. He retained one other memory of his childhood which, however absurd it might have seemed to another, had for him a prophetic meaning. He wrote of it:—
'I remember that once in infancy, lying in my cradle, I fancied that a kite flew to me and opened my lips, and rubbed his feathers over them. It would seem to be my destiny all my life to talk about wings.'
The question of human flight had indeed become the preoccupation of his whole life. Now, even as forty years before, standing again on the slope of the White Mountain it seemed to him an intolerable injury, even an impossibility, that men should remain wingless.
'He who knows all can do all,' thought Leonardo. 'I have only toknow; and there shall be wings.'
On one of the final zigzags of the path he felt himself touched from behind, and turning saw Giovanni Boltraffio who, hat in hand, eyes half shut, head bent, was battling with the wind, and had evidently been calling for some time unheard. When he saw the Master with long hair streaming on the blast, and look of indomitable will, his thoughtful eyes, deep lines on his forehead, and overhanging brows contracted in a frown, seemed to the disciple so strange and terrible as to be barely recognisable. Even the broad folds of his red cloak bellying in the wind were like the pinions of some strange bird.
Giovanni shouted as loud as he could, but he was so much out of breath he could only articulate broken phrases.
'Just come—from Florence. Letter—important—told to give it into your hands at once!'
Leonardo guessed at a communication from Cæsar Borgia, and quickly recognised the writing of Messer Agapito his secretary.
'Go down at once,' said Leonardo, seeing Giovanni blue with cold. 'I will follow you immediately.' And he watched Boltraffio as he fought his way through the storm, clinging to frail boughs of low-growing shrubs, crawling over rocks, bending double, absurdly small and weak in comparison with his surroundings and the fury of the elements. Heappeared an epitome of all human weakness; and, watching him, Leonardo was reminded of the curse of some grave impotence which seemed to have lain upon his whole life, which had, he feared, condemned him to eternal sterility, besides depriving him of the sympathy of his fellows.
'My Wings!' he thought, 'Ah! will not they fail like everything else?'
And he remembered the words spoken by Astro in his delirium, the answer of the Son of Man when the devil would have seduced him by the terror of the abyss, by the fascination of flight: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!'
He raised his head, set his teeth, and again addressed himself to the ascent, conquering the mountain and the storm. The path had disappeared. He guided himself over the bare rocks where, perhaps, none had trodden before. Suddenly he found himself upon the edge of a precipice, till now unseen; misty dull purple filled with air and yawned beneath his feet as if the void and endless heaven were below no less than above. The wind had become a hurricane, and howled and roared like continuous thunder. Leonardo could have fancied that unseen evil birds—flock after flock—were sweeping past him on gigantic wings. No further advance was possible; never had the long familiar idea appealed to him with such force; never had he been so impressed by the logic, by the necessity, of the power of flight.
'There shall be wings!' he cried, 'if the accomplishment be not for me, 'tis for some other. It shall be done. The spirit cannot lie; and Man, who shall know all and who shall have wings, shall indeed be as a god.'
And he pictured to himself the King of the Air, Him who can pass all bounds and supersede all the laws which limit human intelligence, the Son of Man coming in his glory and power, theMagno Cecero, 'the Great Swan,' borne on wings immense, white, shining as light itself, in the blue of heaven.
And his soul was filled with a joy akin to terror.
As he descended from Monte Albano the sun was setting. The pointed cypresses were black against the golden sky; the receding mountains tender and translucent as amethyst. Thewind had subsided. He was approaching Anchiano, and the hill town of Vinci was already in sight.
He stopped, and murmured:—
'From the mountain which takes its name from the conqueror (Vinci—Vincere) Man shall take his first flight!'
And gazing at his birthplace, there at the foot of the White Mountain, he repeated: 'Eternal glory to the nest from whence he sprang!'
The letter from Messer Agapito announced the approaching siege of Faenza, and demanded the immediate presence of the new engineer and architect in Cæsar Borgia's camp.
Two days later Leonardo left Florence for Romagna.
'A prince must be a beast as well as a man.'Niccolò Machiavelli.—Il Principe.
'A prince must be a beast as well as a man.'Niccolò Machiavelli.—Il Principe.
'We, Cæsar Borgia of France, by the Grace of God, Duke of Romagna, Lord of Piombino, Gonfaloniere of the Holy Roman Church, and Captain-General;
'To all our lieutenants, castellans, captains, condottieri, officers, and subjects;
'We commend unto you the most famous and well-beloved Leonardo Vinci, our architect and chief war-engineer, and command that ye give him everywhere unhindered passage, permitting him to examine, measure, and judge of everything he may desire to see in our fortresses, and affording him all co-operation, and as many men as he may need to help him. And we bid our other contractors to enter into accord in all matters with the will of the above-mentioned Leonardo, to whom we entrust the oversight of all the fortresses and castles in our dominions.
'Given at Pavia on August 18th, in the year of our Lord, 1502, and the second of our reign in Romagna.
'Given at Pavia on August 18th, in the year of our Lord, 1502, and the second of our reign in Romagna.
'Cæsar, dux Romandiolæ.'
So ran Leonardo's new credentials.
These were the years in which Cæsar Borgia was gradually recovering for AlexanderVI. the ancient States of the Church, said to have been conferred on the papacy by Constantine the Great. He had taken the town of Faenza from theeighteen-year-old Astorre Manfredi; and Forlì from Caterina Sforza. The lad and the woman had been confided to his protection. He threw them both into the Castle of St. Angelo. He concluded a fraudulent treaty with the Duke of Urbino, and in 1502 planned a campaign against Bologna. He was intent upon making himself sole and absolute ruler of Italy. In September his enemies, including the dukes of Perugia and Siena, as well as other important personages, assembled at Mugione, and concluded a secret alliance against him. Vitellozzo Vitelli swore the oath of Hannibal, that within a year he would slay, imprison, or exile the common foe. Report of this alliance having been bruited abroad, it was joined by some of the greater princes. Urbino rose in revolt; Cæsar's own troops mutinied; the King of France was slow in coming to his help; he seemed on the verge of ruin. Nevertheless he still had resources, and his enemies were dilatory. The opportunity was let slip, and presently these, his allied enemies, entered into negotiations with the usurper. He overreached them, contriving to set them at variance with each other; by profound dissimulation and courteous manners converted them to a more or less favourable attitude; and presently made an urgent appointment to meet his foes in parley at the newly-conquered town of Sinigaglia.
Leonardo had quickly become a prominent personage at Cæsar's court. The duke employed him in adorning the various towns with palaces, libraries, schools, barracks, and canals. He constructed engines of war, made military maps, and was present at all Cæsar's bloodiest exploits.
Leonardo did not wish to see too clearly, or to know too accurately, what was taking place around him. He eschewed politics. He confined himself almost entirely to observations on physical and social phenomena: the manner of planting orchards, the machinery for ringing the bells at Siena Cathedral, the low music of the falling water in the fountain of Rimini, the dove-cot in the Castle of Urbino. He noted how the shepherds at the foot of the Apennines placed their horns in the narrow openings of deep hollows, so that echo should increase the volume of their sound. For whole days he stood on the desolate shore of Piombino, watching the falling of the waves; and while all around him the laws of human justice were being broken, mused onthe invariability of nature, and found deep-seated joy in the eternal justice of the Prime Mover.
On a day in June the corpses of the young Astorre and his brother were found in the Tiber, stones tied round their necks. The crime was universally attributed to Cæsar. But that day Leonardo noted—
'In Romagna four-wheeled carts are used, the front wheels small, the back large: the construction is faulty, for all the weight rests on the front.'
In the latter half of December 1503 the Duke of Valentinois, with his whole court, moved from Cesena to Fano, on the shores of the Adriatic, twenty miles from Sinigaglia, where the meeting was appointed with his former enemies, Oliverotto da Fermo, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Gian Paolo Baglioni. A few days later Leonardo came from Pesaro to join his patron.
On the way he was overtaken by a storm. The mountains were covered with impassable snow-drifts, the mules slipped on the ice; great waves were heard breaking on the seashore at the foot of the precipice. As darkness came on the travellers lost the path, and, dropping the reins, they trusted themselves to the instinct of their beasts. The mule Leonardo was riding suddenly stopped and grew restive, scenting the corpse of a man who had been hanged, which still dangled from the branch of a solitary tree.
At last they saw a distant light, and the guide recognised the inn at Novilara, a mountain town half way between Pesaro and Fano. The travellers quickened their steps, and presently were knocking at the massive entrance door, studded with nails like the gate of a fortress. A sleepy ostler came first; then the landlord, who declined to receive the new arrivals. All his rooms, all his stables were overfilled; there was not a bed in which three or four were not sleeping—all persons of quality, soldiers and courtiers of the duke's suite.
Leonardo told his name and exhibited his credentials, sealed with the duke's seal. The host poured forth a torrent of apology, and made offer of his own chamber, which atpresent contained only three French captains, all passably drunk and sound asleep.
Leonardo entered the kitchen, which according to the wont of the Romagna inns served also as a parlour. It was very dirty, with patches of damp on the bare walls; guinea-fowl were sleeping on their perches, and baby porkers squeaking round the door; onions, gherkins, and sausages were suspended from the ceiling. A whole pig was roasting before the immense glowing fire. Guests crowded at long tables, drinking and quarrelling over cards.
Leonardo sat down by the stove, and presently, at a square board close by, he saw Baldassarre Scipioni, an old man, formerly captain of the duke's Lancers; Alessandro Spanocchia, the treasurer; Pandolfo Collenuccio, legate from Ferrara, and a fourth gentleman, a stranger, who was gesticulating forcibly, and crying in a thin squeaky voice:—
'I can prove this also,Messeri! I can prove this by instances from ancient and from modern history! Call to mind the states which have acquired military glory—Romans, Spartans, Athenians, Ætolians, and the trans-Alpine hordes. All the great commanders collected their armies from the citizens of their own country. Ninus from the Assyrians, Cyrus from the Persians, Alexander from the Macedonians. I grant you that Pyrrhus and Hannibal won victories by means of mercenaries, but these were generals of exceptional genius. Nor must ye forget my main proposition—the very corner-stone of military science—viz., that in infantry, and infantry alone, lies the strength of an army. Not in cavalry, not in fire-arms and powder, ridiculous toy inventions of modern times.'
'You go too far, Messer Niccolò,' replied the captain of lancers with a smile; 'fire-arms are becoming of some importance. Whatever you say about the Romans and the Spartans, I venture to think our troops are much better equipped. A squadron of our French soldiers, or a battery of thirty bombards, would have made short work of your ancient Romans.'
'Sophisms! Sophisms!' retorted Messer Niccolò with increasing excitement. 'I perceive in your words fearfully perilous error! Some day the Italians will be taught, by a rude lesson, the weakness of mercenary armies, and the pitiful powerlessness of cavalry and artillery. Remember howthe handfuls of Lucullus routed 150,000 horsemen, among whom were cohorts of mounted men exactly similar to the squadrons of the present French cavalry!'
Leonardo looked curiously at this man who spoke like an eye-witness of the victories of Lucullus. The stranger wore a long garment of dark red cloth, falling in straight folds; it resembled that worn by the statesmen of the Florentine Republic and the secretaries of the embassies. It was, however, old and stained. The sleeves were threadbare, and such linen as was to be seen was frayed and soiled. The man had great bony hands, copiously dyed with ink, and a wart on one finger. There was little dignity in his air; he was lean and narrow shouldered, about forty years of age, and with sharp irregular features. Sometimes when he was speaking he would look over the head of his interlocutor, as if peering into space like some long-sighted rapacious bird. In his restless movements, in the feverish flush of his swarthy cheeks, above all, in the intentness of his large grey eyes, there was evidence of smouldering fire within. The eyes themselves were malicious; yet at times, in their sardonic smile, in their cold displeasure, there was an expression of weakness almost pathetic.
Messer Niccolò continued to pour forth his notions; and Leonardo marvelled at the strange mixture of truth and error in his talk, at his audacity, and his slavish appeal to the authority of the ancients. He approved him when he spoke of the scientific difficulty in using guns of large calibre, owing to the inaccuracy of their range; but the next minute he asserted that fortresses were useless, because the Spartans and the Romans built none. He appeared to regard the opinions of the Greeks and Romans much as Leonardo regarded mathematical axioms. The latter, however, did not hear the conclusion of the dispute, as the landlord called him to the bedchamber reserved for him upstairs.