Chapter XVI: Book XI: There Shall Be Wings--1500

'_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.)

I

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 grey olives 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; the _tramontana_, 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 had preserved 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, called _nebbia_, 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.

II

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, a _Manual 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.

III

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. The _tramontana_ blew 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 great antiquity. 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, a _contadina_ from 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 substantial dowry. 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 the dewy 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?'

IV

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 without _one_ abortion.'

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.

V

When the boy had reached the age of thirteen, his father removed him from Vinci to his house. Florence; since then he 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 the _Ospedale 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.

VI

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 called _scopa_ (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 the _scopa_ had 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.

VII

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.

VIII

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 dark _bottega_ near 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.

IX

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 called _rotelle_, 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.

'The _rotella_ is 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 the sketch 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, for _Il Magnifico_ disapproved 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 the _sonatore 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 glorify the 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.

X

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 representation of 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 to _know_; and there shall be wings.'

XI

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. He appeared 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, the _Magno 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.

XII

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. The wind 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.